INDIAN 

LOVE 

LETT 

MARAH  EIJJSRYAN 


IC-NI 


SB 


INDIAN   LOVE   LETTERS 


By  MRS.  RYAN 

FOR  THE  SOUL  OF  RAFAEL 

With  nineteen  photographic 
illustrations,  and  decorations 
by  Ralph  Fletcher  Seymour 
Crown  8vo.  Price, 


A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO. 
Publishers 


INDIAN 
LOVE   LETTERS 


BY 

MARAH  ELLIS  RYAN 

Author  of  "  For  the  Soul  of  Rafael," 
"  Told  in  the  Hills,"  Etc. 


CHICAGO 

A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO. 

1907 


Copyright 

A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO. 
1907 

Published  March  2,  1907 


Decorated  by 
RALPH  FLETCHER  SEYMOUR 


5Tfje 

R.  R.  DONNELLEY  &  SONS  COMPANY 
CHICAGO 


INDIAN   LOVE   LETTERS 


273063 


INDIAN  LOVE  LETTERS 

In  the  Province  of  Tusayan,  Arizona. 
In  the  Moon  of  the  Peach  Blossom. 

Lady  of  the  New  Moon : 

I  know  that  you  will  not  forbid  me 
the  writing  that  name  in  a  letter  when 
your  kindness  allowed  me,  one  sacred 
day,  to  write  it  in  a  poem,  and  the  poem 
was  married  to  the  music  by  you,  and 
was  sung  by  you ! 

Now  that  you  have  made  a  bridge 
across  the  silence  of  the  year,  and  have 
written  me  your  question,  I  will  answer. 

It  is  quite  true. 

Your  friends  who  came  into  the 
Province  of  Tusayan  for  the  masked 
dances  of  the  Hopi  Springtime  have 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

taken  back  to  you  the  truth,  colored,  may 
be  so,  by  the  prejudices  of  their  friends, 
the  missionaries  of  your  faith.  But  the 
main  statement  is  a  fact. 

I  can  see  the  beautiful  eyes  of  tur 
quoise  widen  at  the  reading  of  this.  I 
can  hear  the  little  sharp  breath  drawn, 
and  can  feel  the  little  shock  at  the  con 
fession  I  send. 

Yes !  I  am  again  the  Indian  !  From 
the  moccasin  of  brown  deer  skin  to  the 
headband  of  scarlet,  there  is  not  anything 
of  the  white  man's  garb  to  tell  your 
friends  that  I  was  a  player  of  the  Uni 
versity  team,  who  for  a  little  while  was 
called  by  a  white  man's  meaningless 
name,  and  who  sat  beside  you  on  the  sand 
dunes  of  the  Eastern  Sea  a  year  ago ! 

I  sit  alone  now  and  write  this  on  a 
sand  dune  under  Arizona's  skies,  at  the 
foot  of  old  Walpi's  cliffs. 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

I  came  here  away  from  my  old  tower 
on  the  terrace  and  into  the  silence  to 
write  to  you.  The  Hopi  voices  are  very 
gentle,  very  caressing  in  their  intonations, 
but  to-day  their  music  had  no  meaning 
for  me. 

In  the  sand  dunes  there  is  always 
silence ; —  a  suggestion  of  a  vast  desert  of 
immeasurable  silences  where  everything 
human  can  be  buried  and  forgotten. 

The  white  shells  gathered  by  you  and 
given  to  me  in  jest  that  day  to  make  a 
necklace  for  an  Indian  maiden,  are  on  a 
stone  shrine  centuries  old  on  a  wonderful 
mesa. 

They  keep  company  with  the  baho 
(plume  prayer  sticks)  of  our  primitive 
religion.  The  God  of  the  Skies  guards 
them  there. 

This  morning  at  sunrise  I  planted  a 
baho  of  white  feathers,  and  one  of  pine 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

needles  opposite  them.  Pine  grows  in  that 
place  where  your  shells  were  gathered ! 

The  Prayer-Thought  in  which  they 
were  planted  ?  You,  Lady  of  the  Crescent 
Moon,  and  the  corn- silk  hair,  would  not 
have  approved  it;  neither  would  you  have 
approved  the  method  by  which  it  was 
offered  to  the  gods  of  the  Other  Worlds. 

I  write  this  very  plainly  that  you  may 
know  it  is  no  mistake.  The  land  of  the 
races  and  the  games,  and  the  afternoon 
teas  in  the  arbor,  was  of  another  life  I 
lived.  This  is  Se-kyal-ets-tewa  (Dawn 
Light),  the  Indian,  who  writes,  and  who 
reveres  your  memory,  and  who  lives  again 
an  Indian's  life  in  one  of  the  Indian  cities 
of  the  desert.  Lolomi ! 


9  « 


In  the  Planting  Time  of  the  Corn. 
Tusayan. 

My  Lady  of  the  Silver  Crescent: 

Your  kind  words  of  my  bits  of  verse, 

-your  reminder  of  what  you  hoped  for 

them  — You !  —  has  hurt  more  than  any  of 

the  other  things  of  this  past  year,  and 

there  have  been  many  things  to  hurt. 

The  poems  were  the  fancies  of  a 
lonely  Indian  shepherd  —  the  echoes  of 
the  dreams  of  a  boy !  But  the  man  can 
not  continue  to  dream.  He  has  to  wake 
and  see  things  in  the  sunlight,  which  is 
merciless  on  the  desert.  A  man  may 
flinch  from  the  revelations  of  it,  but  he 
can  not  escape  it. 

Your  letter  is  a  little  cry  of  protest 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

against  the  relapsing  of  the  savage,— an 
escaped  convert. 

But  the  protest,  dear  lady,  has  in  it 
that  little  stereotyped  note  which  the 
scientists  and  government  specialists  of 
the  Indian  field  would,  with  a  little  scep 
tic  smile,  designate  as  belonging  to  their 
"poke  bonnet"  group.  It  lacks  the  per 
sonal  note.  It  is  the  "cause"  that  is 
considered  by  that  group ;  not  the  indi 
vidual. 

The  individual  it  seldom  knows. 
The  sort  of  Indian  it  does  know  is  too 
often  the  poseur  with  the  dangerous  small 
bit  of  education,  and  the  sort  of  favors  he 
accepts  in  the  land  of  the  white  people, 
makes  a  man's  blood  jump  with  anger  to 
remember. 

Yes,  I  will  try  to  tell  you  how  I 
learned  that  the  Indian's  life  is  best  for 
the  Indian.  The  white  man's  life  is  a  life 

6 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

unfulfilled  for  him.  It  promises  every 
thing  but  leaves  him  with  empty  hands. 

I  did  not  think  so  at  first.  In  the 
light  of  your  faith  I  saw  things  radiantly. 
I  was  to  be  their  own  apostle  of  your  re 
ligion, —  and  yours  was  mine, —  blindly 
and  without  question !  From  your  white 
hand,  the  Indian  writer  of  verses  would 
have  accepted  nectar  or  poison  with  equal 
unconcern. 

But  I  have  had  a  year  alone  in  which 
to  think,  and  I  have  had  to  face  facts. 

Not  anything  of  conventional  religion 
called  Christian  has  any  real  appeal  to  the 
Hopitu.  It  is  too  cold  —  too  far  away. 
The  mythology  of  the  Christian  does  not 
bring  the  gods  so  close  as  the  mythology 
of  the  Indian,  and  all  have  the  same  foun 
dation —  created  by  the  minds  of  men; 
influenced  by  the  Divine  universal  Spirit 
of  the  Growing  Things ! 


INDIAN     LOVE    LETTERS 

My  people  listen  to  the  white  man's 
missionaries  because  in  some  cases  they 
are  made  to  feel  that  the  great  power  of 
Washington  is  back  of  them,  and  the  Hopi 
is  not  without  policy! 

They  go  to  the  schools.  They  learn 
the  English  words  and  the  white  man's 
religious  forms, — and  straightway  revert 
to  their  own  gods ! 

In  the  last  Flute  Ceremony,  one  of 
the  girls,  who  led  the  invocation  to  the 
God  of  the  Rain,  was  a  graduate  of  the 
nearest  government  school.  She  looked 
very  beautiful  in  her  draperies  of  purest 
white,  jewels  only  of  silver  and  coral, 
and  the  one  white  feather  in  her  jetty  hair 

—  a  Virgin  Priestess  of  the  Dark  People 

—  leading  the  long  line  of  men  to  the 
shrine  of  the  desert  well   as   her  fore- 
mothers  had  led  the  devotees  from  time 
immemorial. 

8 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

And  the  rain  comes, —  it  has  always 
come  because  of  the  prayers  to  the  God 
there.  It  always  will  come,  the  old  peo 
ple  feel  assured,  so  long  as  the  God  of 
the  Indian  is  not  forgotten.  And  rain  is 
the  very  God  of  Life  to  the  desert ! 

Yesterday  I  talked  with  the  old  chief 
of  Shu-pau-le-vi.  He  is  chief  of  the  vil 
lage,  head  of  his  people  — the  Bear  Clan, 
and  chief  priest  of  the  Snake  Order.  He 
is  a  clever  man.  When  I  first  came  back 
to  Hopiland  I  talked  to  the  chiefs  of  all 
the  villages.  This  one  did  not  speak 
then.  He  said  he  would  think  and  then 
he  would  talk.  Yesterday  he  talked. 

"It  was  in  the  moon  of  the  Young 
Year  when  you,  Se-kyal-ets-tewa,  came 
back  from  the  sea  where  the  sun  comes 
up  from  the  Under- World.  We  listened 
while  you  talked  of  the  missionary  God. 
You  read  to  us  out  of  their  book  what 

9 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

their  God  could  do,  and  of  what  the  peo 
ple  who  had  the  love  of  their  God  in  their 
hearts  could  do.  It  was  much.  I  have 
waited  to  think,  and  I  have  looked  each 
day  on  the  missionaries'  work,  and  the 
work  of  their  mission  God. 

"  It  is  a  lie.  And  the  truth  is  not  in 
the  hearts  of  the  people  who  preach  that 
God  and  scold  our  women  in  our  own 
houses. 

"Your  book  says  what  the  White 
God  did.  The  dead  grew  alive ;  the  blind 
could  see,  and  the  sick  were  made  well 
by  Him.  The  book  says  that  the  true 
followers  of  the  God  can  do  all  that,  and 
can  do  more  than  that ;  and  that  the  sick 
will  be  well  by  the  touch  of  their  hand 
and  a  true  heart ! 

"The  missionary  can  not  make  the 
sick  well  by  the  words  from  a  true  heart, 

but  the  Navajo  singer  can !     I,  with  my 

10 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

eyes,  have  seen  that !  Why,  then,  should 
the  Navajo  listen  to  the  missionary?  The 
missionary  does  not  believe  in  his  own 
God,  or  he  would  do  the  work  of  that 
God  as  the  God  said  he  could  do  it  if  he 
had  faith. 

"  Your  book  says  if  the  followers  of 
the  White  God  have  true  hearts  they  can 
make  friends  with  serpents,  and  no  sting 
will  come,  and  no  poison. 

"The  missionaries  who  preach  that 
God  have  not  the  faith  in  their  hearts  or 
they  would  lift  the  Brother  Snake  as  we 
do  from  the  sands  in  the  warm  Moon  of 
the  Green  Corn ! 

"We  keep  him  days  and  nights  in 
the  kiva,  many  of  him  close  to  us,  with 
only  good  in  our  hearts,  and  he  becomes 
as  a  babe  who  loves  us.  When  the  days 
have  passed,  we  give  to  the  Brother 

Snake  our  message  for  the  gods,  and  we 
11 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

take  them  to  the  four  ways.  We  lift  them 
to  the  Sun  that  the  Sun  may  be  glad,  and 
that  the  Snake  may  be  glad,  and  then  we 
let  them  go,  and  they  carry  our  message 
to  the  Under- World  where  the  gods  are, 
and  the  people  who  no  longer  walk  in  our 
Earth  Life. 

"They  carry  the  message,  and  the 
gods  know  that  our  hearts  were  good, 
and  that  our  faith  was  good,  and  our  God 
listens  and  sends  the  rain  as  we  ask. 

"They  come  walking, the  he-rain  and 
the  she-rain,  across  the  desert,  and  to 
gether  they  come  to  the  corn  fields,  and 
the  peach  orchard,  and  the  wells  under  the 
mesa,  and  they  make  fruitful  all  the  land. 

"We  are  glad,  and  we  know  that  the 
great  God  in  the  Sky  is  glad,  and  the 
gladness  comes  because  we  were  not  one 
little  heart-beat  afraid  that  our  God 

would  fail  us ! 

12 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

"Has  your  white  man's  God  such 
true  followers?  Must  we  listen  to  the 
missionaries  whose  God  fails  when  they 
touch  the  Brother  Snake  ? 

"Have  the  missionaries  taught  you, 
Se-kyal-ets-tewa,  to  do  the  things  the 
White  God  said  in  the  book  they  could 
do? 

"No? 

"When  they  teach  you  that,  Se-kyal- 
ets-tewa,  come  here  again  to  Shu-pau-le- 
vi  and  I  will  follow  your  White  God,  and 
my  children  will  follow  your  White  God! 

"When  we  plant  our  plumes  where 
the  shrines  are,  our  first  prayer  is  for  good 
thoughts,— then  that  our  children  may  be 
wise  and  strong,  and  that  the  God  of  the 
Sky  may  be  glad  of  us.  I  have  listened 
to  the  mission  talk  many  days,  and  noth 
ing  in  the  words  of  the  missionary  is  more 
white  than  the  Thought  which  we  plant 

13 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

with  the  prayer  plumes  on  our  shrines. 

"I  have  talked." 

Then  I  spoke  in  the  house  of  a  won 
derful  potter  of  Te-hua.  She  is  an  artist 
and  decorates  and  shapes  great  things  in 
the  clay.  Not  so  great  as  some  found  in 
the  buried  cities,  but  the  greatest  made 
to-day  by  an  Indian.  Her  children  were 
lassoed  a  few  years  ago  and  their  hair  cut 
short  by  a  mission  field  order.  Their 
hair  was  their  pride  as  the  beard  was  the 
pride  of  the  Hebrew  priests.  The  humili 
ation  of  those  families  was  very  great. 

Her  son  was  there  while  we  talked. 
He  was  one  of  the  boys  lassoed,  and 
taken  to  the  government  school.  He  is 
back  on  the  mesa,  and  is  ugly  to  look  at 
when  the  schools  are  mentioned.  Six 
years  of  his  life  were  wasted  there.  He 
comes  back  to  his  people,  and  knows  that 
if  he  lives  there,  it  must  be  as  his  father 

14 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

lived  —  except  that  now  he  has  more  cul 
tivated  tastes  to  satisfy,  and  no  further 
means  or  method  of  earning  the  price  of 
them.  To  plant  the  corn,  herd  the  sheep, 
hunt  the  rabbits,  take  care  of  his  share  of 
his  own  village  —  these  are  the  life-work 
of  Hopitu.  The  schools  teach  them  to  do 
that  no  better  than  their  fathers  did  it  be 
fore  them.  They  are  taught  to  read  and 
write,  and  he  asks  "  for  what  ?  " 

The  cities  of  the  mesa  have  no  books, 
and  have  never  felt  the  need  of  them. 
Why  should  they  read  of  the  American 
life  they  live  apart  from?  Suppose  all 
your  books,  dear  lady,  dealt  with  an  un 
known  land  in  the  heart  of  Africa,  would 
their  contents  seem  vital  to  you  ? 

These  people  are  content  without 
that  other-world  knowledge.  The  women 
grind  the  meal,  the  men  weave  and  em 
broider  their  ceremonial  garb  and  look 

15 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

after  the  herds,  and  all  are  gentle,  cour 
teous,  and  happier  than  any  people  I  have 
yet  seen. 

The  pottery-maker  is  as  bitter  as  her 
son  over  the  wasted  years  when  she 
needed  him,  and  he  was  lassoed  like  a 
stray  colt  and  taken  to  the  white  man's 
school.  The  daughter  of  her  sister  was 
also  taken.  The  girl  was  pretty.  She  is 
not  so  pretty  now,  and  she  shed  tears, 
and  her  mother  beat  her  when  she  came 
back  to  the  mesa  ashamed.  The  Hopi 
mother  guards  closely  her  girls  in  her  own 
home,  but  when  the  Great  Powers  combine 
to  take  the  girl  into  a  life  that  is  all  strange 
and  new,  and  she  is  afraid,  at  every  turn, 
of  the  dominating,  masterful  white,— how 
could  the  poor  mother  guard  her  girl  there, 
or  how  could  she  understand  the  influ 
ences  not  known  on  the  mesa,  or  feel  sym 
pathy  when  the  girl  came  back  ashamed? 

16 


INDIAN     LOVE    LETTERS 

It  is  so  everywhere.  The  educated 
Indian  is  barred  out  from  his  own  people 
by  a  smattering  of  book  learning,  which 
the  chiefs  see  is  to  sooner  or  later  divide 
them  into  Mission  Indians  and  Pagan  In 
dians.  When  that  change  sets  in,  the 
secret  religious  orders,  with  their  mystic 
rights,  are  divided,  and  there  is  discord 
in  the  Clans.  The  children  are  told  in 
the  mission  that  their  fathers  in  the  Kiva 
(the  Pagan  sanctuary)  are  wicked  men,— 
and  so  poison  spreads !  It  results  in 
mission  Indians,  called  "Friendlies,"  and 
the  conservatives,  called  "Hostiles,"  and 
in  those  two  terms  is  all  the  foundation 
needed  for  internal  strife,  of  which  there 
is  much ! 

I  would  help  for  harmony,  but  one 
missionary  spoke  to  them  of  my  wisdom, 
and  my  ability,  and — from  that  day  it 
could  not  be  possible  for  me  to  be  trusted 

17 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

by  the  Conservatives — I  was  barred  out — 
with  smiles  and  all  courtesy,  but  —  I  am 
barred  out ! 

They  will  listen  to  the  white  teach 
ers,  because  the  government  is  back  of 
them,  but  they  know  that  I,  Se-kyal-ets- 
tewa,  the  Indian  of  the  Flute  Order,  has 
no  government  back  of  him!  In  five 
years,  or  ten  years,  I  might  live  down 
their  suspicion.  Not  before  that,  though 
I  crucified  myself  for  them;  — that  is 
decided  in  Tusayan ! 

So  I  am  Se-tewa,  the  worker  in  sil 
ver,  as  was  my  father,  and  his  fathers, 
when  the  Castilians  first  camped  under 
our  city  walls  three  centuries  ago. 

My  people  ruled  then,  and  rule  now. 
My  uncle  is  chief  of  his  Clan  and  his 
Order.  He  is  afraid  that  he  may  die  and 
I  be  chief  in  his  place,  but  I  do  not  wish 
it. 

18 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

The  agent  from  Washington  is  the 
real  chief.  He  decides.  Rather  than  be 
a  pretended  chief,  I  would  be  glad  to  fight 
as  our  people  fought  the  Apaches  long 
ago  until  all  were  killed  but  the  one  let 
live  to  carry  the  word  back  to  his  tribe  of 
how  it  was  done!  The  Apache  shield 
cut  in  the  rock  wall  of  the  mesa,  is  in 
memory  of  that  battle,  and  the  score  is 
cut  opposite  it  to  show  the  number  that 
was  killed,  and  —  they  were  many. 

But  we  are  not  fighters  now.  He 
who  writes  was  first  an  Indian  shepherd, 
who  dreamed  dreams  and  sang  songs. 
Then  for  one  little  Breath  of  Heaven  he 
was  called  by  you  "friend," —  and  now  he 
works  at  a  forge  in  a  tower  over  a  gateway 
that  was  very  ancient  when  the  first  Cas- 
tilians  came  to  the  land. 

The  day  is  going.  The  herald  is 
calling  from  the  house-top  the  religious 

19 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

ceremony  in  order  for  to-morrow.  The 
Indian  does  not  keep  his  religious  cere 
monies  for  the  seventh  day  alone.  They 
are  part  of  every  day  he  lives,  and  to 
even  memorize  all  of  them  is  scarcely 
possible  for  one  man. 

The  herald  looks  very  stately  wrapped 
in  his  scarlet  blanket,  standing  tall  and 
straight  against  the  gold  of  the  sunset  sky. 
It  is  always  at  the  sunset  and  sunrise  that 
he  calls  to  the  people. 

At  the  sunrise  when  I  see  him  thus 
I  think  of  Omar's  word -picture  of  the 
Persian  Muezzin  of  whom  you  read  me 
once;  —  all  other  readings, have  been  for 
gotten  ! 


20 


In  the  Moon  of  the  Rose. 
Tusayan. 

Maid  of  the  Moon  Song : 

Did  I  not  make  it  clear?  There  is 
no  place  for  the  Indian  in  your  world. 
There  is  no  occupation  for  him  except 
a  sort  of  grind  for  which  the  aborigine 
can  not  be  fitted  in  one  generation  of 
drilling. 

Money  ?  Yes !  a  man  can  make 
money  there.  But  what  can  an  Indian 
buy  with  it  in  the  white  man's  land,  that 
is  worth  the  having?  The  Indian  whose 
intelligence  makes  a  place  for  him  in  the 
higher  circles,  is,  even  there,  only  a  wild 

thing  caged  for  a  while; — tamed,  and 
21 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

petted,  and  shown  to  one's  friends  as  a 
novelty  for  an  afternoon  or  evening ! 

Often  he  is  entertained  in  ways  not 
good  for  him.  His  college  chums,  and 
their  friends,  find  much  amusement  in 
planning  ways  in  which  there  is  novelty. 
Sometimes  the  sisters  and  the  cousins  of 
the  college  chums  add  to  the  entertain 
ment; —  but  the  college  chums  do  not 
know  that ! 

The  daughters  of  the  desert  are  not 
clever  enough  for  that  double  life, —  but 
with  further  teaching  from  the  white  people 
they  will  know  in  time.  It  is  inevitable ! 

I,  Se-tewa,  wish  to  die  as  an  Indian 
before  that  time ! 

Revered  little  Maid,  your  life,  en 
shrined  and  sainted  as  it  is,  sees  and 
hears  none  of  the  disillusions  an  Indian 
boy  meets  at  every  turn  in  the  white 

crowds  of  the  cities. 
22 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

He  does  not  want  to  be  stared  at ; 
-admired  because  he  can  play  a  good 
game,  and  pitied  because  he  is  of  the 
great  unclassed ! 

The  sympathy  which  means  under 
standing, —  that  is  the  thing  he  waits  for, 
and  looks  in  each  face  for,  and  all  he 
meets  is  the  interrogation  as  though  a 
glance  should  ask,  "  What  is  it  you  seek, 
Brown  Wanderer  ?  " 

I  sought  nothing.  I  was  taken  be 
cause  my  people  did  not  know  how  to 
say  "no  "to  "Washington." 

I  carried  with  me  the  songs  of  the 
old  men,  and  the  memories  of  the  desert, 
and  dreams  —  dreams  of  the  greatness  I 
was  to  see ! 

I  did  not  see  it.  I  used  to  think  of 
the  eagles  chained  on  the  roofs  of  old 
Walpi  for  the  sake  of  the  feathers  to  be 
had  from  them  for  the  Snake  Ceremony. 

23 


INDIAN    LOVE     LETTERS 

The  eagle  tugs  at  his  chain,  and  thinks  of 
his  mates  drifting  on  the  upper  currents 
of  air  high  above  desert,  and  mesa,  and 
far  pine  forest  of  the  Navajo. 

I  was  like  that,  —  a  young  eagle 
tugging  at  his. chain! 

Then  all  the  world  changed  for  me, 
and  I  heard  your  voice  — voice  of  a  night 
bird  singing  one  of  my  Indian  songs ! 
You  could  not  know  it,  but  I  wept  that 
night  for  the  first  time  after  they  had 
taken  me  from  the  mesa.  I  did  not  feel 
alone  any  more. 

It  was  my  Hoetska — my  night  bird's 
song  you  set  to  the  music  first:  —  And 
I  could  feel  the  whisper  of  the  desert 
wind,  and  smell  the  sage,  and  see  the 
stars  above  the  mesa  !  —  all  in  that  music 
—all  held  together  by  your  voice !  For 
that— for  the  singing  of  it— you  were  the 
one  woman, — but  for  the  wedding  of  your 

24 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

music  to  my  words  —  for  that  you  were 
the  very  spirit  of  a  boy's  dream  ! 

The  boy  was  only  a  young  savage, 
and  his  adoration  amused  your  friends, 
but  not  you,  dear  lady  of  the  Moon  Song! 
You  saw  only  a  soul  to  be  gained  for 
your  religion,  and  that  was  a  very  sweet 
and  very  serious  matter  to  you,  dear  little 
lady  revered ! 

The  English  words  seem  harsh  when 
I  use  them  to  you !  If  you  knew  the 
Hopi,  the  inflections  would  tell  you  the 
difference.  I  always  think  of  you  in  Hopi. 


25 


The  Moon  of  the  Shearing. 
In  an  Indian  Kiva  at  Tusayan. 

Lady  Hoetska : 

That  is  the  name  of  the  little  night 
bird  of  the  desert  whose  song  you  sang ! 
When  the  dusk  comes  I  think  of  you  as 
Hoetska,  and  — listen  for  the  call  of  the 
gray  little  bird  in  the  canon  ! 

There  has  been  trouble  on  the  mesa, 
and  I  have  been  away,  else  your  dear  and 
kind  letter  would  not  have  been  left 
without  answer. 

The  trouble  with  the  missionaries 
and  government  at  Oraibi  has  brought 
echoes  of  trouble  here.  I  was  interpreter, 
and  when  the  result  of  the  council  was 

26 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

bad,  the  chief,  and  after  him  the  others, 
looked  on  me  with  suspicion.  For  a 
while  I  have  been  in  the  Navajo  land.  I 
have  tried  to  see  how  it  is  with  other 
tribes  and  their  laws,  and  talk  with  other 
chiefs  and  agents.  It  is  all  empty  words 
—  the  same  everywhere ! 

The  Navajos  do  not  know  their 
rights  under  the  law  any  more  than  the 
Hopi,  and  the  worst  is,  that  it  is  not  wise  to 
tell  them !  If  they  learn  now  how  they 
have  been  treated  through  the  past  years 
against  the  laws,  the  trouble  would  only 
end  in  conflicts  through  which  no  one 
could  secure  benefit. 

I  visited  other  tribes  last  year — the 
Plains  Indians.  It  is  the  same.  One 
Reservation  dares  not  send  any  but  a 
white  man  as  interpreter  with  Indian 
delegates  to  Washington.  No  Indian 
would  be  allowed  by  the  agents  to  speak 

27 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

for  them,  lest  the  government  learn  some 
truths.  Their  condition  is  pitiable. 

My  people,  at  least,  are  not  like  that. 
They  have  their  corn  fields  and  their 
grazing  lands  and  their  homes  —  as  yet! 
But  there  is  a  constant  fight  to  get  them 
out  of  their  houses,— their  ancient  fort 
resses  !  The  white  farmer  lives  near  his 
corn  fields,  and  the  Hopi  is  told  he  must 
do  the  same  unless  he  wants  eventually 
to  lose  them  to  the  white  squatter  when 
statehood  comes.  Many  of  the  Hopi  men 
ride  miles  each  morning  to  their  little 
plantations,  do  their  work,  and  ride  back 
at  night  to  their  wonderful  mesa. 

My  uncle  fears  I  will  be  chief.  To 
show  him  I  have  no  such  wish  I  have 
left  my  tower  over  the  portal.  I  write 
this  in  the  stone  walls  of  one  of  the  many 
buried  cities  of  our  desert.  This  one  is 
near  the  mesa,  and  only  a  portion  of  it 

28 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

has  been  excavated  by  the  seekers  after 
ancient  potteries  and  trinkets.  v  Many 
pounds  of  turquoise  were  taken  from  this 
room,  and  woven  fabrics,  and  curious 
sandals  of  the  people  whose  names  are 
lost.  One  chain  of  woman's  hair  was 
found  there  golden  as  your  own,  white 
maid  of  the  East ! 

This  room  was  later  the  Kiva  of  the 
priests  of  some  order.  It  may  have  been 
my  own  — the  Flute  People.  When  the 
wind  whistles  in  a  storm  across  the  sand 
dune,  I  like  to  think  it  is  Le-lang-uh,  the 
Flute  leader,  who  sends  his  call  down  the 
ages  to  us  for  reminder  of  the  Things  of 
the  Spirit.  The  Snake  Order,  which  is  the 
strongest,  gives  precedence  always  to 
the  Flute  Order,  which  they  recognize 
and  welcome  as  closer  to  the  spiritual 
side  of  life ;  in  touch  with  the  gods,  and 
to  them  the  Flute  speaks ! 

29 


INDIAN     LOVE    LETTERS 

Since  your  letters  came  I  have  writ 
ten  for  you  verses  of  these  —  my  ancient 
people,  and  the  land  in  which  they  lived. 
Some  day  I  will  bind  them  all  together 
and  send  them  to  you.  So  kind  a  critic 
have  you  always  been !  Always  —  I  write 
that  as  though  it  had  been  ages  instead  of 
a  few  weeks  I  was  happy  in  looking  on 
your  face,  and  hearing  your  voice ! 

But  there  are  moments  like  lightning 
flashes  of  insight  —  a  searchlight  turned 
on  a  soul !  And  in  one  such  moment, 
when  you  let  the  Indian's  eyes  look  into 
your  own  across  a  Manhattan  dinner 
table— you  may  not  even  remember,  so 
many  eyes  turned  your  way !— the  Indian 
knew  in  that  flash  that  his  bonds  were 
farther  back  than  that  look,  and  farther 
in  the  future  than  his  eyes  could  see! 
That  is,  with  the  gods. 

This  I  may  never  send  you.     So 

30 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

many  unwise  things  have  gone  on  paper 
since  you,  in  your  pity,  asked  me  to 
write.  When  they  are  very  unwise  — 
very  Indian  —  they  are  not  sent !  So  the 
little  poems  are  not  sent.  They  must  be 
winnowed  many  times  ere  the  tiny  grains 
are  fit  for  your  eyes ! 

It  is  lonely  here  in  the  city  of  the 
dead.  One  great  star,  Venus,  shines 
above  the  shrines  on  the  mesa  — we 
watched  it  together  from  the  shore  of  the 
eastern  sea  a  year  ago. 

It  is  the  one  visible  link  with  that 
life.  I  can  not  go  back  to  that  life,  but  I 
watch  for  the  star ! 


31 


Season  of  the  Nemon  Katchina. 
In  the  Kiva. 

Lady  of  the  New  Moon  : 

Again  has  your  letter  waited ! 
I  have  not  walked  for  more  days  than 
they  will  tell  me.  The  old  Indians  say  it 
is  the  curse  brought  by  white  people's 
schools  —  this  cough  and  this  weakness  ! 
Maybe  so.  Many  do  come  back  with  it, 
and  maybe  it  belongs  to  the  days  when  I 
went  from  tribe  to  tribe,  and  slept  on  the 
ground  when  the  cold  rains  walked  in  the 
night. 

But  to-day  I  sit  at  the  top  of  my 
ladder — the  Kiva  is  always  under  ground; 
there  must  be  but  one  entrance  to  the 

32 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

sanctuary,  and  that  must  come  from  the 
way  of  the  sky ! 

The  world  looks  very  beautiful 
across  the  plains.  There  is  a  well  below 
the  walls,  where  the  herders  bring  their 
sheep,  and  goats,  and  burros,  and  there 
are  many  peach  trees,  and  a  great  sand 
dune.  Across  it  one  lone  track  leads  into 
the  nothing  of  the  distance,  and  breaks 
the  ripples  of  the  sand  —  they  are  as  rip 
ples  on  the  water  when  the  breeze  comes. 

Always,  as  one  looks  far  to  the  south 
here,  there  is  a  suggestion  of  the  sea 
coast, —  the  soft  haze  makes  one  feel  that 
just  beyond  the  buttes,  and  mesas,  and 
the  Sacred  Mountains  of  the  West,  the 
water  must  be.  The  walls  of  the  Walpi 
mesa  —  the  narrow  finger  of  stone  hun 
dreds  of  feet  high  jutting  out  into  the  plain, 
-speaks  to  one  of  giant  breakers  once 
beating  the  rock  barriers  into  the  sands. 

33 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

One  dreams  of  the  water  here  in  this 
land,  where  hourly  the  women  pass  and 
re-pass  on  the  narrow  trails,  carrying  the 
great  water  bottles  to  the  wells  in  the  old 
city  in  the  mesa.  You  are  artist  enough 
to  appreciate  the  picture  they  make 
against  the  sand  dunes,  or  the  rock  wall, 
or  the  sky ! 

The  earthen  bottles  they  carry  are 
very  heavy,  and  are  borne  on  their  backs 
in  a  scarf  or  shawl  forming  a  band  above 
the  brows.  It  looks  like  cruel  work, 
but  the  Hopi  maid,  who  grinds  meal  daily 
on  the  primitive  grinding  stone,  and  sings 
at  the  same  time  the  songs  of  the  coming 
of  the  gods,  and  of  the  running  water, 
and  of  the  butterflies  hovering  above  the 
desert  bloom,  is  made  very  strong,  and 
when  she  becomes  a  woman,  no  load 
seems  heavy. 

A  strange  thing  has  happened.    You 

34 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

ask  me  to  tell  you  all  of  the  life  here, 
which  seems  no  part  of  the  America  you 
have  known,  so  I  must  tell  you  this. 

When  I  was  ill,  some  one  unknown 
to  me  came  to  the  old  Kiva  and  took 
care  of  me.  I  thought  it  was  the  old 
Chief  who  relented,  and  had  sent  some 
one  from  the  village  —  but  it  was  not  so. 
When  no  one  saw  me  on  the  trail,  or  at 
the  Sun  Shrine  of  the  mesa,  they  thought 
I  was  gone  again  to  the  Navajo  land,  and 
no  one  can  tell  who  carried  me  the  water, 
and  brought  me  eggs  and  piki. 

The  Chief  looks  not  pleased  at  it. 
He  would  like  to  make  the  people  think 
that  I  am  doing  some  sacrilege  by  living 
in  the  old  Kiva,  and  that  the  bread  and 
the  water  is  of  ghostly  bringing.  He 
would  like  them  to  think  that  I  disdain 
the  rules  of  the  Orders, —  even  the 
unknown  Orders  of  the  Ancient  Dead ! 

35 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

Once  I  wakened  and  heard  a  step, 
and  some  one  running  on  the  roof  above. 
Once  I  saw  a  face  —  the  startled  face  of  a 
boy  —  looking  at  me  from  the  top  of  the 
ladder,  and  on  my  pillow  was  fresh  silk 
of  the  corn!  Often  I  heard  the  soft 
tones  of  Te-hua  when  I  was  too  dull  and 
stupid  to  care  whence  they  came,  but  the 
corn -silk  seemed  always  on  the  pillow  or 
on  the  stone  floor.  It  was  the  color  of 
your  hair,— Talapsha-mana. 

And  even  now  that  I  can  walk  the 
same  care  comes.  I  do  not  walk  far. 
My  dwelling  is  on  the  knoll,  and  to  walk 
far  means  to  climb  a  steep  place  on  my 
return  — but  in  the  little  while  I  may  be 
gone,  some  one  brfhgs  to  the  Kiva  simple 
things  that  a  sick  man  might  eat,  and  the 
wonder  grows  as  to  who  it  may  be ! 

You  ask  the  meaning  of  the  sig 
in  my  letters.     It  means  different  things 

36 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

in  different  lands,  and  has  been  known  in 
all  of  them.  It  is  found  in  prehistoric 
carvings,  and  is  claimed  alike  by  the 
Oriental  and  the  Indian  medicine  singer, 
or  chanter  of  the  healing  songs  of  their 
faith. 

The  Persian  meaning  is  pretty.  It 
combines  for  them  the  Su,  a  sacred  bird 
of  their  mythology,  with  the  Astika,  an 
eight-rayed  star  of  most  mystic  signifi 
cance. 

I  like  best  the  Apache  reading  of  the 
symbol.  To  him  it  is  a  sign  for  the 
Spirits  of  the  Air  who  reveal  the  unseen 
in  visions. 

When  one  of  their  priests  or  medicine 
men,— for  like  the  original  apostles  of 
your  religion  who  were  called  upon  to 
demonstrate  by  their  work  that  they  were 
entitled  to  preach  of  the  God ;  — like  those 
men,  the  priests  of  the  Indian  tribes,  must 

37 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

be  proven  by  their  work,  not  by  their  talk: 
they  are  both  priest  and  physician — when 
one  of  them  wants  to  come  nearer  the 
gods,  or  bring  the  God  Thought  close, 
he  carries  a  little  tablet  or  amulet  with 
this  sign  on  it,  and  goes  alone  up  into  the 
Mountains,  and  chants  his  prayers  over 
it  for  hours  —  perhaps  for  days  —  and 
waits  for  the  coming  of  the  spirits  whom 
the  gods  send ! 

And  I,  a  creature  of  visions  — an 
Indian  who  lives  most  in  his  dreams 
these  days, —  I  have  no  mountain  to  climb 
to  bring  the  God  Thought  near,  but  I 
have  a  shrine  on  the  mesa  ! 

And  there  where  the  baho,  and  the 
pine  needles,  and  the  white  shells  are,  the 
visions  come  very  close  sometimes:  and 
in  recognition  of  them,  I  use  their  symbol. 


38 


In  the  Vine  Bloom. 

Maid  of  the  New  Moon  : 

To-night  the  real  Lady  Luna  whom 
we  call  Mu-ya-wuu  is  coming  from  our 
Under-World  beyond  the  far  mesa  of 
Awatobi  — tragic  city  of  the  Old  Days  — 
whom  ancient  Walpi  annihilated  ! 

Not  until  one  has  slept  in  the  desert 
with  the  sage  brush  for  a  pillow,  does  he 
know  the  witchery  of  desert  nights. 

Darkness,  and  the  glimmer  of  stars ! 

Then,  beyond  the  far  highlands,  the 
cool  silver  radiance  grows  and  grows ! 

Miles  of  the  lower  plain  where  the 
corn  fields  are,  still  in  the  shadow.  But 

39 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

the  near  sage  on  the  higher  knolls  is 
transformed,— and  the  white  glory  of  it  is 
sifted  through  the  silver  gray,  odorous 
screen ! 

Clouds,  fleecy  white,  drift  across  the 
high  blue,  and  against  it  is  silhouetted  one 
moving  figure  —  an  Indian  shepherd  late 
in  his  home-coming  from  the  corrals. 

The  silver  light  catches  the  crimson 
of  his  headband,  and  the  white  of  the 
goat-skin  he  carries  across  his  shoulder- 
then  a  turn  in  the  trail  hides  him  in  the 
shadow  of  a  little  canon!  And  again, 
there  seems  nothing  living  in  all  a  beau 
tiful  but  lonely  world, —  nothing  nearer 
than  the  deathless  smile  of  the  stars  — 
and  the  reflected  light  of  the  silver  globe 
which  scientists  tell  us  is  a  long  dead 
world ! 

I  write  "nothing  nearer,"  and  on 
that  instant  the  little  call  of  Hoetska, 

40 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

the  night  bird,  came  to  me  from  the  soft 
gray  shadows  of  the  canon, —  only  once 
—  one  call ! 

But  the  one  call  brought  the  needed 
note  of  harmony  to  the  night ! 

My  white  training  tells  me  that  the 
shepherd  startled  the  night  bird  there  by 
the  trail,  and  that  it  did  not  know  or  care 
that  I  waited  for  its  signal;  but  my 
Indian  dreams  tell  me  other  things,  and 
the  lonely  world  of  a  moment  ago  is  no 
longer  lonely ! 

You  ask  me  of  the  Indian  cities  of 
the  mesa,  but  they  are  scarcely  describ- 
able  in  a  letter.  There  are  so  many  mesas 
with  the  old  stone  villages,  jutting  out 
into  the  plains,  and  numberless  ruins  of 
others  whose  names  are  now  forgotten  ! 

Ours  has  three  villages.  One  comes 
up  the  great  stone  roadway  past  the  Sun 
Shrine,— and  the  place  of  this  shrine  is 

41 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

so  beautiful  that  the  Greeks  would  have 
built  marble  temples  to  their  gods  there ! 
One  goes  up  and  up,  with  the  great  rock 
wall  rising  high  on  one  hand,  and  another 
rock  wall  falling  sheer  on  the  other  hand, 
—  and  the  view  of  the  plain  below,  — the 
long  lines  of  corn  fields  of  deepest  green 
and  the  strip  of  yellow  sand — and  the 
paler  green  of  the  desert  and  the  grazing 
ranges, —  and  the  dark  wall  of  the  far 
mesa  fencing  it  to  the  east, — words  could 
tell  you  nothing  of  the  beauty  it  holds ! 

And  then  from  the  view  of  the  plain 
below,  one  turns  to  find  himself  suddenly 
at  the  end  of  the  road  and  in  the  very 
village.  That  is  Te-hua — and  Te-hua  is. 
the  keeper  of  the  Gate  Way.  The  Te-hua 
people  belong  to  a  different  lingual  group, 
but  ages  ago  they  migrated  from  the  Rio 
Grande  and  sought  to  live  with  the  power 
ful  Walpis.  Our  people  said,  "Yes,  you 

42 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

are  welcome  ;  there  is  room,  but  you  build 
your  village  where  the  pass  is,  and  you 
guard  the  Gate  Way  against  the  Apache 
and  the  Navajo  —  thus  may  you  live 
here."  So  they  did,  and  they  put  the 
shrine  at  the  Gate  Way  to  help  them 
guard  it,  and  so  it  has  been  ever  since ! 

The  houses  are  of  stone — terraced,— 
and  there  is  always  an  inner  court  where 
most  of  the  religious  ceremonies  are  held, 
and  always  the  shrine  in  the  centre ! 

From  Te-hua  it  is  only  a  little  space 
to  Si-chom-o-vi,  a  newer,  better  built 
village,  but  less  picturesque.  And  then 
beyond  that  — along  a  narrow  trail  worn 
deep  in  the  rock  through  the  ages,  — then 
one  faces  Walpi ;  a  great  pile  of  old  stone 
walls  and  terraces,  and  portals,  and  stone 
steps  to  the  roofs,  on  which  half  the  life 
is  lived ! 

It  looks  like  pictures  of  old  castles 

43 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

of  the  middle  ages.  She  has  been  mis 
tress  of  these  plains  for  centuries  — has 
Walpi.  She  has  lived  long  and  seen  tribes 
live  and  die,  —  and,  in  her  uncounted 
years,  seen  loves  live  and  die  —  if  Love, 
the  Real,  ever  does  die ! 

The  Indian  can  not  think  that  it 
does.  Perhaps  somewhere  in  that  Under- 
World  of  the  gods,  it  is  born  again, — 
where  there  is  no  death  —  and  where 
there  are  no  veils  drawn  between  our 
lives  ! 

In  the  Snake  Ceremony  of  which  I 
wrote  you,  the  snake  priests  always  send 
a  message  before  the  altar  to  those  of  the 
Under- World,  who  are  understood  as 
being  always  very  near,  and  who  must 
never  be  forgotten;  there  must  be  no 
veil  between !  The  snakes  would  not 
like  it, —  and  the  gods  of  the  Under- 
World  would  not  like  it ! 

44 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

You  see,  we  are  very  primitive — very 
close  to  the  few  real  things  within  our 
world's  knowledge !  The  Hopi  knows 
he  will  be  punished  in  the  Under- World 
if  he  does  evil  here,  but  it  is  as  a  father 
or  older  brother  would  punish  a  child  to 
teach  it  wisdom!  There  is  no  Hell  such 
as  the  Christians  believe  in,  —  and  no 
personal  Devil  who  revels  in  tortures. 

I  can  not  reply  to  the  sweet  things 
you  wrote  me  of  your  own  faith  —  I  can 
only  say  it  is  not  for  the  Indian !  If  I 
told  you  of  the  reasons  why,  it  might 
hurt  you. 

Those  thoughts  of  yours  are  inherited, 
as  are  the  thoughts  of  my  Hopis.  You  did 
not  find  them.  They  were  no  personal 
revelation  to  you ;  they  are  with  you  by 
calm  acceptance  of  the  approval  of  many 
good  and  admirable  persons  whose  opin 
ion  you  would  not  presume  to  question. 

45 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

But  if  you  will  take  the  very  heart 
germ  of  that  inner  belief  of  yours, — strip 
it  of  all  the  ceremony  you  have  it  dressed 
with, —  take  it  apart  from  the  tabernacle 
made  by  hands  of  men,— take  it  into  the 
open,— carry  it  with  you  to  a  flower  in  the 
meadow,  a  rock  in  the  desert,  a  pine  or 
palm  in  the  forest— any  expression  of  the 
Living  Spirit  of  the  Growing  Things,— 
or  even  shut  yourself  alone  with  it  in  the 
Silent  Places, — you  will  find,  according  to 
the  spirit  that  is  in  you,  how  much  and  how 
little,  the  conventional  form  counts  for  in 
the  meeting  with  the  God  in  you ! 

Each  life  must  find  its  own  revela 
tion  of  Religion,  as  each  life  must  find  its 
own  revelation  of  Love. 

Some  lives  never  do  find  either. 

They  live  a  sort  of  twilight  existence, 
and  those  who  live  in  the  twilight  know 
nothing  of  the  power  of  the  Sun  ! 

46 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

They  shrink  from  it ;  they  mask 
themselves  from  its  glory;  they  light, 
instead,  their  little  candles  of  conventional 
religious  form  —  moulded  by  some  one 
else !  They  light  other  little  candles  that 
the  glimmer  may  outline  their  careful, 
well-ordered  affections. 

They  read  in  books  of  what  Religion 
should  be,  and  of  what  Love  should  be, 
—another  man's  theories  of  Love  !  — and 
by  that  they  think  it  is  duty  to  live,  and 
they  live  by  that ! 

The  Indian  has  no  Book  of  Love, 
but  the  Book  of  Nature.  It  needs  no 
glimmer  of  candle  for  the  reading. 

The  Flame  Divine,  when  it  does 
come,  brings  with  it  the  light  of  individual 
revelation.  This  is  true  also  of  all  vital 
religion. 

The  Apache  who  goes  alone  to  the 
heights,  and  concentrates  his  very  Being 

47 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

on  the  thought  of  visions  from  the  Powers 
of  the  Air,  comes  very  close  to  the  line  of 
thought  followed  by  the  accepted  prophets 
of  your  own  faith. 

But  the  Indian  has  had  no  written 
language  to  record  his  Mountain  Visions 
or  prophecies ! 

This  religion  of  the  Indian  could 
not  appeal  to  you  — all  your  training  and 
inheritance  are  against  it.  But  neither 
does  the  religion  of  your  missionaries 
appeal  to  my  people — it  demoralizes  them 
by  making  them  pretend,  out  of  policy  to 
government  and  missionary,  to  believe 
that  which  they  do  not  believe !  And 
that  is  the  real  infidelity  to  one's  own 
soul! 

The  Hopi  is  facile,  adaptable,  and 
imitative,— on  the  surface.  But  when 
they  die,  they  die  fearless  Pagans,  and 
go  to  walk  in  the  orchards  or  corn-fields 

48 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

of  the  Under -World,  where  the  sun,  and 
the  stars,  and  the  moon  go  after  they  pass 
the  edge  of  the  western  horizon. 

The  Hopi  knows  that  the  corn-fields 
of  the  Under -World  must  have  the  sun 
one-half  each  day,  and  that  the  stars  and 
the  moon  follow ! 

The  missionary  may  talk  to  them 
of  Trinities,  and  a  Heaven  in  the  Sky, 
and  a  God  who  died  for  them,—  but  the 
kind  of  God  the  Hopi  wants,  is  a  God 
who  answers  prayers  to  the  music  of  the 
Flute,  and  who  makes  the  corn  grow ! 

You  think  that  very  material?  Yet 
the  prayer  of  the  Hopi  is  not  so ;  it  is 
first  of  all  for  good  and  beautiful  thoughts 
—  or  to  meet  the  Thought  of  the  gods! 
The  prayers  even  for  material  things  are 
at  least  not  selfish,  for  they  are  for  the 
general  good.  Only  a  sorcerer  would  pray 
to  the  gods  with  an  evil  wish  in  his  heart! 

49 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

New  Moon  Lady,  I  do  not  like  to 
write  the  things  which  seem  to  argue 
with  you.  I  only  have  to  show  you  that 
my  life  will  not  be  long  enough  to  change 
one  iota  of  this  inherited  religion, —  and  I 
see  no  better  one  I  could  direct  them  to 
— none  that  is  better  for  the  Indian. 


50 


In  the  Kiva. 

Dear  Lady  of  the  New  Moon  : 

I  have  found  my  nurse  of  the  sick 
days !  You  ask  about  the  girls  and  the 
women  here.  I  will  try  to  tell  you  of  this 
one.  It  is  very  strange. 

I  started  from  the  Kiva  and  had  for 
gotten  a  staff  I  have  walked  with  since  the 
weakness  and  the  cough  came.  I  turned 
back,  and  then  I  saw  some  one  going 
down  the  ladder.  I  stood  quite  still  by 
the  corner  of  the  old  wall,  and  then,  after 
a  little,  there  came  quickly  up  from  the 
Kiva  a  girl  who  looked  behind  her  in 
fear,  and  who  carried  an  empty  water  jar, 

51 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

and  who  almost  fell  when  I  stopped 
before  her  and  put  out  my  hand. 

She  trembled  so  that  I  took  the  water 
jar  lest  it  should  fall  and  break  — and 
then  the  tears  came  in  her  eyes  and  I  saw 
that  she  was  afraid.  I  took  her  hand  and 
sat  down  on  the  old  wall,  and  tried  to 
have  her  sit  there,  but  she  slipped  from 
my  grasp  and  sat  on  the  ground,  a  little 
ways  off.  She  was  pretty. 

"So  it  was  you,"  I  said,  and  she 
bowed  her  head,  and  the  dark  red  came  in 
her  face,  and  then  she  grew  almost  white. 
It  means  much  for  a  Hopi  girl  to  go  to  a 
house  where  a  man  is  alone.  It  is  against 
their  traditions,  and  she  knew  — I  knew! 

"It  was  I,  and  Basa,  my  little 
brother,"  she  said  at  last. 

Then  I  remembered  the  boy's  face  I 
had  seen,  and  after  many  questions  she 
told  me  all. 

52 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

She  was  a  shepherd  girl  tending  the 
herds  because  her  brothers  were  too 
small  to  go  alone.  Their  father  was  no 
longer  on  earth.  They  had  two  burros 
and  they  lived  near  the  gate  of  Te-hua. 

When  they  brought  the  sheep  to  the 
spring  they  had  heard  my  moans  under 
the  ground.  Other  shepherds  had  heard 
them  and  run  away.  Ghosts  were  said 
to  trouble  that  old  ruin. 

But  she  had  seen  me  sleeping  one 
day  by  the  wall  of  the  Kiva,  and  had 
remembered,  and  she  held  fast  the  hand 
of  her  brother  and  would  not  let  him  run 
away,  and  they  followed  the  voice  till 
they  found  me— and  that  was  all! 

She  feared  the  Chief  would  forbid  her 
coming  to  the  Kiva,  so  she  had  threatened 
her  brother  if  he  told  it. 

She  had  heard  that  Walpi  was  angry 
with  me. 

53 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 


U 


And  were  you  not  afraid  to  anger 
Walpi?"  I  asked,  and  smiled  at  her — but 
she  did  not  smilo;  she  looked  very 
troubled,  and  bowed  her  head  again. 

"  Walpi,  when  angry,  can  be  terrible," 
she  said,  and  pointed  to  the  line  after 
line  of  stone  wall  and  stone  foundations 
around  us  —  the  markings  of  a  larger  city 
than  now  stands  in  the  desert.  "This  was 
Si-kyat-ki,  a  proud  place,  and  rich  in  the 
other  days.  Then  Walpi  grew  angry,  and 
men  came  down  from  the  cliffs  one  awful 
day,  and  killed  all  but  the  girls  they 
carried  back  with  them.  It  is  not  well  to 
anger  Walpi ! " 

She  spoke  with  a  certain  foreboding 
—  and  she  certainly  wanted  to  be  kind. 

"What  is  your  name,  little  maid  of 
Te-hua,"  and  the  incongruous  one  she 
spoke  will  make  you  smile—  "Geraldine." 

"I  mean  your  own  name, —  the  one 

54 


INDIAN    LOVE     LETTERS 

before  the  missionary  saw  you — the  name 
Te-hua  gave  you." 

She  lifted  a  handful  of  sand  and  let 
it  fall  slowly  on  the  stones  beside  her. 

"I  am  this,"  she  said,"Tii-wa-ni-ne- 
ma,  the  sand  of  the  desert ! " 

I  asked  her  if  she  had  always  been  a 
shepherdess,  and  at  that  she  broke  down, 
and  wept,  and  said  "No."  She  had  been 
taken  to  the  government  school  and  made 
to  learn  the  books  and  the  writing  —  and 
her  mother  had  died  while  she  was  gone 
—  and  her  father  had  died  before  that  — 
and  they  had  only  the  sheep  and  the 
two  burros— and  there  were  two  little 
brothers. 

If  she  had  not  wasted  the  time  in  the 
schools  she  might  have  learned  to  shape 
the  pottery  and  draw  on  it  the  symbols  of 
an  old  faith  with  the  brush  of  the  yucca 
fibre, —  and  some  day  she  might  have 

55 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

made  it  fine  as  the  work  of  Nam-payo, 
but  all  the  years  were  lost  in  the  schools 
—  and  now  she  would  be  old  before  her 
brothers  were  able  alone  to  keep  the 
sheep  and  plant  the  corn !  She  looks 
seventeen ! 

And  that,  dear  lady,  is  the  little 
tragedy  of  one  Indian  girl  whom  the 
schools  have  unfitted  for  the  one  art  she 
craved.  She  has  tried  to  smother  the 
craving,  but  it  has  made  her  bitter.  She 
is  more  aggressively  Indian  than  if  she 
had  never  read  a  written  page ! 

I  had  brought  from  the  Navajo  land 
a  silver  serpent  bracelet  of  a  very  ancient 
design.  When  she  forgot  to  be  gentle 
Te-hua  and  held  up  her  head,  and  spoke 
of  the  schools,  and  the  lives  wasted  in 
the  white  men's  way  of  life,  she  looked 
as  if  the  serpent  bracelet  would  fit  well  on 
her  arm ! 

56 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

I  asked  her  to  wait  and  I  brought 
it  to  her. 

"Wear  this  for  me,  little  sister,"  I 
said,  "and  remember  when  you  look  at  it 
that  I  stand  ready  to  help  you  —  and  to 
help  your  brothers." 

She  stood  up  and  let  me  fasten  it  on 
her  arm.  She  did  not  smile  at  the  gift 
as  Hopi  maidens  do. 

"I  shall  remember  that  when  you  are 
Chief,  O  Se-kyal-ets-tewa !  And  it  will 
be  on  my  arm  when  they  cover  me  with 
the  sand  under  the  mesa."  Then  she 
walked  away. 

Her  every  intonation,  her  carriage, 
and  her  thoughts,  are  so  Indian  that  she 
is  a  delight. 

Many  of  the  girls  newly  from  the 
schools  retain  the  feeling  that  they  should 
strive  to  be  like  white  people.  She  is 
the  aggressive  opposite. 

57 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

The  long  lines  of  rain  have  been 
walking  over  the  land  while  I  write  to 
day.  And  after  the  rain  we  have  sunsets 
here  so  wonderful  that  one  wishes  not  to 
lose  one  little  portion  of  them.  Because 
of  them  I  miss  my  mesa  heights ;  yet  it 
will  be  worth  climbing  for  when  I  am 
again  able. 

I  meant  to  go  this  day,  but  the  day 
is  nearly  done. 

I  close  my  eyes  and  see  the  glory  of 
the  rose  light  touch  the  white  shells  on 
the  shrine ;  but  only  my  thoughts  go— I 
can  not  follow. 


58 


The  Kiva. 
The  Bloom  Time  of  the  Desert  Things. 

Maid  of  the  Far  Land : 

You  may  be  right.  But  what  use  to 
see  now  that  I  might  have  been  happier 
without  the  White  Man's  books?  To 
see  it  now  is  years  too  late — wasted 
years, —  and  only  one  memory  of  sweet 
ness  is  mine  as  compensation  ! 

Yes,  I  was  not  only  content.  I 
thought  my  lot  full  of  happiness. 

Walpi  to  me  was  queen  of  the  world, 
and  even  yet  there  has  never  been  any 
thing  to  me  more  beautiful  than  her  old 
walls  looming  against  the  sky  as  one  sees 
them  from  the  sand  dune. 

59 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

The  dawn  and  the  dusk  here,  as  seen 
from  the  mesa,  are  revelations  of  beauty- 
new  each  day ! 

It  is  a  joy  for  me  to  remember  that 
even  as  a  boy,  I  felt  the  glory  of  it  all. 
I  could  not  have  told  it  in  words — even 
music  can  not  express  it  for  me !  But 
that  boyish  recognition  of  it  helps  me  to 
understand  my  people  now. 

They  do  not  say  to  each  other, "It 
is  beautiful,"  but  they  would  fight  until 
all  perished  if  an  attempt  was  made  to  re 
move  them  to  the  lands  of  their  corn-fields. 

The  missionaries  do  not  understand 
that  love  of  beauty  in  the  Indian's  heart. 
Neither  does  "Washington."  If  they  did 
they  would  not  put  the  ugly,  square,  iron- 
roofed  dwellings  here  in  this  wonderful 
desert  setting— they  are  hideously  incon 
gruous  !  The  Indian  has  always  selected 
the  best  form  and  material  for  building 
in  this  land.  His  art  instinct  along  these 

60 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

lines  is  perfect— no  white  builder  in  three 
centuries  has  improved  upon  it ! 

The  little  shepherdess  does  come 
with  her  brother  at  times.  I  told  her  the 
message  you  sent  —  and  your  offer.  She 
was  silent  —  thinking  a  long  time.  Then 
she  said  "No." 

Before  she  went  away  she  asked  me 
what  you  looked  like  — the  lady  who 
wanted  to  be  kind  ! 

I  learned  then  how  hard  it  would 
seem  to  picture  you  to  one  who  had  not 
seen  you  — one  can  not  tell  in  words  the 
light  in  the  eyes  or  the  charm  in  the 
smile. 

I  could  only  tell  her  how  fair  you 
seemed,  and  that  the  corn-silk  hair  was 
like  that  of  a  little  child,  and  then  she 
said,  "Talapsha —  Talapsha!"  which  is 
the  word  for  corn-silk — and  walked  away. 

After  she  was  gone  I  remembered 
that  corn-silk  on  my  pillow  when  I  came 

61 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

out  of  the  sickness !  She  is  a  strange 
girl.  Her  work  is  the  work  of  a  boy  and 
it  makes  her  different  from  the  gentle 
Hopi  maidens. 

She  did  not  thank  you  for  the  kind 
ness  you  offered,  but  I  thank  you  —  for  it 
was  an  offer  to  my  friend,  and  the  thought 
is  dear  to  me. 

When  in  Navajo  land  I  found  one 
little  piece  of  the  very  old,  delicate,  rose 
coral,  of  which  little  is  left  in  Indian  pos 
session.  Coral  like  that  came  here  with 
the  first  Castilians— they  brought  it  as 
special  gifts  to  the  Indian  Emperors  of 
the  Quivira  whom  they  thought  to  find 
in  the  desert. 

I  have  cut  it  into  little  crescents  and 
set  them  in  a  ring  of  silver;  silver  is 
called  the  "metal  of  the  Moon"  by  the 
Indian,  and  is  more  beloved  by  them  than 
the  yellow  metal  valued  by  the  white 
brother —  and  sister ! 

62 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

Because  of  the  sacredness  of  it  I 
send  it  to  you,  with  the  hope  that  some 
day, — on  a  seashore  day,  maybe! — you 
will  let  it  rest  on  one  of  your  beautiful 
hands ! 

You  will  not  object  to  the  symbol 
set  beside  the  coral  crescents?  The 
maker  of  the  ring  knows,  —  O  Talapsha 
Lady!  —  that  you  are  as  far  from  him  as 
the  coral  in  the  depths  of  the  sea,  or  the 
moon  in  the  sky ! 

And  he  sets  in  the  ring  the  sign  of 
the  Spirits  of  the  Air  to  show  you  how 
well  he  knows  it;  and  when  the  little 
silver  circle  goes  to  you  it  will  live  in  his 
mind  only  as  part  of  a  Dream. 

Hoetska,  the  gray  little  night  bird  of 
the  desert,  and  the  Indian  in  an  ancient 
Kiva,  alone  know  what  the  Dream  was ! 


63 


Lady  Revered : 

Did  it  call  for  reproof  —  the  little 
ring  whose  value  in  coin  would  scarce 
have  purchased  one  of  the  handkerchiefs 
of  filmy  weaving  which  you  were  always 
losing,  and  an  Indian  exile  always  found 
and  brought  back  to  you? 

And  you  feel  it  your  duty  to  tell  me, 
O  wise  Talapsha  maid !  that  there  is  a 
man  — that  it  is  my  college  chum  — that 
he  might  not  understand,  and  that  —  in 
another  year  you  two ! 

In  a  year  from  now  I  may  not  be 
able  to  send  you  a  wedding  gift. 

64 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

Keep  the  little  Indian  ring  for  that 
day — or,  if  the  thought  in  it  offends  you, 
give  it  to  the  sea,  where  the  sand  dunes 
and  the  pines  are  ! 

If  I  were  dead  a  thousand  years  I 
know  it  would  hurt  me  if  another  hand 
touched  it ! 


65 


In  the  New  Moon  of  the  Corn. 

Lady  Beloved: 

I  write  it  thus  because  the  written 
words  will  never  meet  your  eyes:  — no 
written  word  of  mine  shall  ever  startle 
you  again,  or  ever  offend  you  again  ! 

By  that  decision,  I  have  —  in  some 
strange  way  —  torn  down  the  barrier  that 
was  between  us ! 

I  dare  let  my  thoughts  go  to  you  as 
I  did  not  dare  those  other  days  when  I 
waited  for  your  letters,  and  needed  to 
remember  that  the  replies  must  not  be 
too  Indian  else  I  prove  perhaps  my  own 
doomsman. 

66 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

That  is  what  I  have  now  done.  The 
gods  have  punished  me ! 

But,  Talapsha  maid!  you  could 
not  guess  the  thing  you  did,  when,  in 
your  sweet  kindness,  you  bridged  over 
for  a  man  the  silence  of  a  starved,  empty 
year!  The  letters  to  you  have  become 
the  strongest  hold  I  have  on  life,  and  I 
can  not  give  them  up  ! 

The  things  of  beauty  in  the  nights 
and  days  of  the  desert  land,  I  have  grown 
to  see  for  two ;  and  the  joy  of  seeing  it 
for  you  is  far  beyond  two-fold  —  beyond 
the  telling ! 

So  long  as  I  live  at  all,  I  must  keep 
with  me  the  feeling  that  I  am  still  seeing 
it  for  you— that  I  am  recording  it  for  you ! 

The  poems  will  tell  you  perhaps 
what  it  has  meant  to  me;  — for  the  poems 
sing  themselves  in  the  heart. 

Only  words  of  music  could  suggest 

67 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

to  you  what  your  music  revealed  to  me 
within  myself. 

And— O  Maid  of  the  New  Moon— 
only  you  and  I,  out  of  all  the  world,  will 
know  the  meaning  of  the  poems,  and  of 
how  they  grew  in  the  heart  of  an  Indian 
dreamer ! 

No  one  will  know  who  the  corn-silk 
maid  is,  or  who  the  Lady  of  the  New 
Moon  is,  and  there  will  be  all  those  dear, 
secret  poem  days  and  nights  between  us 
—  and  the  dawns,  and  the  dusks,  and  the 
starlight  on  the  mesa  where  the  stone 
stairs  lead  up  from  the  shrine ! 

After  the  stars  come  out,  the  women 
no  longer  go  up  those  stairs  to  the  pool 
in  the  rocks  to  fill  their  water  jars,  and  a 
great  silence  is  everywhere  over  that  high 
level.  And  there  is  a  sense  of  being 
apart  from  and  above  the  world  of  people, 
and  at  times,  even  above  one's  own  self. 

68 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

It  is  one  of  the  many  places  sacred 
to  thoughts  of  you  ! 

We  will  go  there  together  now — you 
and  I  —  very  quietly  —  side  by  side ;  and 
the  dear  nearness  of  you  will  bring  the 
joy  where  words  are  not  needed— not 
even  a  touch  of  hands;  — touch  might 
drive  the  Dream  away ! 


69 


The  Kiva. 
In  the  Love  Moon  of  the  Dream. 

Dream  Lady  of  Mine : 

Yesterday  I  rode  in  the  early  day  to 
Shu-pau-lo-vi.  After  the  talk  with  the 
Chief  I  went  up  a  little  hill  at  the  end  of 
the  mesa  where  the  forgotten  dead  city  of 
Teh-bel-Haf-Kaquia  is,  and  waited  there 
to  see  the  sunset  on  Walpi,  seven  miles 
across  the  plain. 

Misty  purple  it  was  on  far  mesas,  and 
the  wonderful  stretch  of  the  desert  bronze 
was  touched  by  a  glory  of  rose ! 

Shadows  of  the  mesas  lengthened 
across  the  level  —  walked  ! 

Over  all  was  a  sea -shell  sky,  and 

70 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

westward,  back  of  the  rock-built,  cliff- 
perched  Shu-pau-lo-vi,  scattered  clouds 
poised  like  a  flock  of  gray  eagles,  whose 
wide-spread,  shadowy  wings  were  edged 
with  red  gold  ! 

Then,  quick,  a  cloak  of  gray  and 
purple  draped  over  all  the  reflected  rose 
of  the  mesa,  and  the  world  of  color  was 
dead,  and  from  the  summit  of  the  dead 
city  the  star— our  star— was  seen  in  the 
turquoise  over  the  great  cliff  to  the  west. 

All  the  glory  of  it  —  all  but  the  clear 
silver  gleam  of  that  star — had  faded,  and 
far  across  the  level  was  seen  the  cold 
shadows  of  night,  in  which  one  could 
sense  the  coming  of  winter. 

Then,  after  all  hope  of  warmth  was 
gone,  there  came,  like  a  final  benediction 
in  color,  a  clear  flush  of  pink  over  the 
turquoise,  and  the  star  was  suddenly 
gold  instead  of  silver,  and  the  harmony 

71 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

of  it  all  made  one  hold  his  breath  and 
instinctively  reach  out  a  hand  for  the  far 
—  perhaps  never  known  —  soul,  who 
could  share  it  all  with  the  same  feeling ! 

That  last  line  seems  like  heresy,  O 
Dream  Lady!  For  the  Indian  Spirits  of 
the  Air  who  listen  have  brought  you  so 
close  to  me  that  all  my  heart-beats  are  of 
gratitude  — the  nearness  of  you  is  so 
sweet  it  is  almost  a  pain ! 

But  there  are  tragic  moments  when 
I  try  to  call  you  to  me  and  you  do  not 
answer!  I  know  you  will  come  close 
again ;  that  you  must  be  here  in  a  little, 
little  while,  O  Hoetska !  and  whisper 
the  music  of  our  songs  to  me  ! 

But  that  wild,  momentary  dread  of 
losing  you,  does  come  — and  where  you 
are,  in  even  that  one  lost  moment,  I  dare 
not  think ! 

But  you  were  with  me  on  that  ride 

72 


INDIAN    LOVE     LETTERS 

from  Shu-pau-lo-vi.  So  closely  were  you 
with  me  that  I  write  it  down  for  myself, 
and  if  the  lost  moments  do  come  again,  I 
can  look  at  the  written  page,  and  that 
wonderful  night  will  come  back ! 

And  while  I  recall  the  sweetness  of 
it  — O  Maid  of  the  Corn-Silk  hair!— you 
will  slip  again  into  your  place  beside  me 
on  the  old  wall  of  the  Kiva. 

It  was  a  night  of  all  sweet  sugges 
tion.  The  moon  was  young — grown  only 
enough  to  cast  our  shadows,  side  by  side, 
on  the  sage  brush  and  the  sand !  The 
fragrance  of  the  night-growing  things 
came  to  us  and  were  breathed  together, 
and,  silently  joyous,  we  rode  through  the 
fields  of  the  corn  like  two  Navajo  raiders 
under  the  moon ! 

My  horse  grew  impatient  at  the 
many  times  I  halted  him  to  look  at  the 
wonderful  star  as  it  sank  nearer  Shu-pau- 

73 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

lo-vi  terraces,— but  I  knew  you  wanted 
to  look  again  and  again  at  the  beauty  of  it! 

As  we  began  the  ascent  of  the  rising 
ground  at  the  Walpi  side  of  the  river,  the 
star  seemed  held  so  long  a  time  on  the 
very  edge  of  the  roof  that  one  could 
not  but  remember  the  wandering  Te-hua 
God,  Poseyamo,  who  went,  ages  ago,  to 
some  southland,  and  who  is  surely  to 
come  again,  and  for  whom  signal  fires 
have  burned  through  the  centuries  to  light 
him  back  to  this  land  of  the  faithful. 

The  blaze  of  the  star  on  Shu-pau-lo- 
vi's  wall  held  beauty  enough  to  call  all 
the  gods  back  —  if  they  had  seen  it ! 

The  beauty  of  it  touched  my  heart  so 
that  it  ached !  Once  I  almost  asked  you 
to  ride  close  — closer ;  to  let  me  draw 
the  dear  head  of  the  corn-silk  hair  for 
once  so  near  that  the  sweet  pain  —  so 
keen!  so  keen! — became  as  a  knife  to 

74 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

cut  through  this  wall  of  the  flesh  and  set 
free  the  spirit  to  merge  itself  even  more 
absolutely  with  your  own  ! 

For  I  know,  O  Moon  Maid  of  mine ! 
that  if,  for  once,  your  dear  head  lay  folded 
close,  and  willingly,  on  my  breast,  or  the 
lips  of  you  —  the  dear,  living  lips!  — 
touched  me,  I  should  die  of  that  happi 
ness  ! 

And  I  am  dying ! 

I  have  at  last  written  it ! 

Hoetska,  our  gray  little  night  bird, 
will  soon  sing  alone  here  in  the  dusks — 
and  there  will  be  no  one  to  record  her 
call  for  you.  You  will  hear  it  only  through 
the  verses  I  send  you  —  they  can  be  the 
wedding  gift ! 

I  have  not  written  this  before.  I 
have  not  whispered  it  even  to  myself. 
But  I  must  have  known  it  for  a  long  time. 
On  many  trails  I  have  been  seeing  the 

75 


INDIAN     LOVE      LETTERS 

beauty  of  the  Earth-Life  with  the  look  of 
good-bye. 

In  the  Navajo  forests  it  was  the 
most  pain  to  think  good-bye. 

I  slept  there  with  the  fragrance  of 
the  pines  about  me;  and,  O  Talapsha 
Maid!  it  was  well  the  barriers  of  thought 
were  still  between  us!  The  wind  through 
the  trees  there  sounded  like  the  whisper 
and  sighs  of  our  Eastern  Sea,  and  the  old 
life  came  close  —  so  close ! 

In  the  waking  hours  one  can  keep  a 
Lady  of  the  New  Moon  on  a  shrine  and 
kneel  there ;  but  in  the  hours  of  sleep, 
the  dreams  come, — the  dreams ! 

And  as  one  says  good-bye  along  the 
trails  — and  good-bye  to  each  sunset  of 
the  Earth-Sky,— there  is  rebellion  in  the 
blood  at  times ! 

The  keen  desire  for  life  —  the  warm 
and  embracing  clasp  of  human  life  —  is 
so  strong !  We  cling  to  it — to  the  thought 

76 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

of  it  —  as  we  keep    our    eyes    on    the 
shadowy  pillar  looming  ahead  of  us  on 
the  trail,  and  on  it  is  written,   "Thus 
Far  Does  Human  Life  Walk  With  You- 
Not  Beyond ! " 

Human  Life  has  walked  with  me 
many  days  longer  because  of  your  letters 
of  the  Springtime  and  the  Summertime— 
and  I  read  now,  why!  It  has  been  that  I 
might  live  for  this  Moon  of  the  Corn, 
and  that  the  barriers  should  fall,  and 
that  I  could  draw  you  in  my  dreams, 
close  to  me  —  to  go  with  me  for  the  good 
byes  on  the  Earth-Trails ! 

When  the  New  Moon  came  this  time 

—  in  a  sky  of  rose,  O  Talapsha!    and 
our  star  beside  it  in  its  tender  beauty  !— 
I  know  it  was  our  Love  Moon  (Hal-ye 
Mu-yo-wuu)— our  first  and  last  one  !  and 

—  it  is  Lolomi ! 


77 


The  Hogan  of  the  Peach  Tree. 
In  the  Love  Moon. 


Talapsha-mana : 

A  bird  call  in  the  dawn  — and  then 
the  flecked  glory  of  red  gold  lying  low  in 
the  east ! 

Against  it  stands  the  solid  blue  of 
the  far  mesa  —  dark  and  formless  yet  in 
the  new  day, — only  near  one  do  the 
clumps  of  blooming  things,  and  the  sage 
brush,  and  the  sand  dunes  catch  the 
light,—  all  golden ! 

My  gray  mesa  of  the  Sun  Shrine  is 
touched  into  rose  by  the  kiss  of  the 
awakened  God  of  the  new  day ! 

78 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

The  sunsets  are  so  beautiful  that 
they  hurt, — but  the  sunrise  I  watch  for 
always!  It  is  so  good  to  see  it  come 
each  time  out  of  the  darkness. 

When  one  knows  that  the  Big  Dark 
ness  is  coming  soon,  he  grows  like  a 
little  child  in  the  hours  of  the  long  nights 
—and  the  dawn  is  a  glory  of  promise ! 

This  is  the  first  writing  of  the  Hogan 
of  the  Peach  Tree,  but  never  have  you 
been  out  of  my  heart  —  not  one  little 
minute !  Two  days  ago,  when  the  earth 
groaned,  and  struggled,  and  the  walls  of 
the  Kiva  lifted  and  sank  again,  and  the 
great  rocks  split  open  along  the  foot  of 
the  mesa,  the  thought  of  you  was  the 
closest  thing  in  all  of  Life ! 

I  did  not  feel  that  I  was  saying  good 
bye  to  you.  I  had  the  exalted  feeling 
that  the  Goddess  of  the  Death  Sleep  had 
come  to  free  me  that  I  might  walk  unseen 

79 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

by  you  always  — and  the  thought  was 
sweet  beyond  words ! 

The  God  of  the  Sky  knows  that  if  I 
had  put  the  one  prayer  of  my  heart  into 
words,  it  would  be  for  that.  Did  He 
send  me  that  thought  when  the  trembling 
of  the  earth  came,  that  I  might  have  hap 
piness  with  me  to  the  End  of  the  Trail  ? 

The  thought  — and  the  vision  of 
promise  in  the  thought  — brings  a  joy 
too  tremulous  for  words;  my  heart 
shakes,  for  that  might  mean  — always  ! 

Tu-wa-ni-ne-ma  comes  and  looks 
dark  and  sad  on  this  Hogan  of  the  Peach 
Tree  at  the  edge  of  the  sand  dune.  She 
is  here  to-day  and  she  is  very  good.  I 
wish  sometimes  she  would  not  sit  like 
that,  and  look— look  at  the  pen  and  paper 
when  I  write. 

But  she  can  not  know  that  there  is 
beside  me  the  unseen  and  beloved  Maid 

80 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

of  the  New  Moon  whom  my  longings 
hold  close ! 

And  she  can  not  know  that  my  heart 
is  a  shrine  in  which  there  is  silence,  and 
one  Dream  in  sanctuary  there  ! 

Even  the  voice  of  the  people  jars  on 
me  these  days  when  they  all  want  to  talk 
to  me  of  the  earth  quaking  — for  I  was 
nearer  to  it  than  any  other!  I  know 
many  of  them  come  filled  with  the 
thoughts  of  the  Chief ;  and  he  is  certain 
that  it  was  the  God  of  the  Under- World 
who  shook  the  earth  to  drive  me  from  the 
dead  city  where  the  Spirits  of  the  Sor 
cerers  have  walked  undisturbed  through 
the  ages ! 

My  new  Hogan  —  but  to  you,  O 
Dream  Beloved! — that  thought  sounds 
nothing  to  you.  I  want  you  so  close  here 
in  the  open  that  I  can  spell  out  every 
thing  to  you — it  does  bring  you  nearer! 

81 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

Hogan  is  Navajo  for  dwelling.  We 
live  such  a  little  ways  from  those  hand 
some  Indian  raiders  — their  tribe  and 
mine  have  always  had  enmity  over  the 
corn-fields  and  the  herds,— and  we  bor 
row  many  words  from  each  other ! 

Walls  are  not  always  needed  for  a 
Hogan  —  nor  a  roof !  It  means  the  place 
where  one  lives,  though  it  be  only  a  sleep 
ing  place  for  the  night.  One  sees  a  circle 
of  sage  brush  in  the  open  desert, — a  tiny 
circle  covered  by  a  blanket,  and  under  it 
some  brown  wanderer  sleeps.  That  is 
his  Hogan.  In  your  language  you  say, 
"Home  is  Where  the  Heart  Is,"  but  my 
heart  dares  not  go  to  its  home  —  not  yet ! 

It  can  only  reach  out,  and  bring  here 
to  this  new  home,  the  Dream  in  which 
the  heart  is  centred. 

From  the  shade  of  my  peach  tree  I 
can  lie  on  the  blanket  and  look  up  to 

82 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

Hua-lo,  the  great  break  in  the  rock  where 
the  Sun  Shrine  is. 

The  little  forge  is  here  beside  me, 
but  I  have  tried  twice  to  work  and  it  is 
not  easy. 

I  meant  to  make  an  armlet  to  match 
the  ring— if  it  went  to  you  with  the 
poems,  and  I  were  no  longer  alive,  it 
surely  would  not  hurt  you ! 

How  one  clings  to  life !  To  give  up 
the  work,  and  put  the  tools  away,  is  to 
say  that  life  is  done  with ;  so,  with  the 
thought  of  you — of  how  beautiful  I  would 
make  it  for  you  —  I  try  to  lift  myself  out 
of  the  weakness. 

A  leaf  falls  on  my  hand  as  I  write  — 
it  is  as  if  you  touched  me !  You  are 
very  close  on  that  side  of  the  blanket 
where  the  hand  was!  I  rest  sometimes 
and  close  my  eyes  —  and  reach  out  my 
hand,  and  where  it  lies  on  the  sand  I  can 

83 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

feel  your  own  under  it — slender,  and  cool, 
and  white ! 

When  I  was  stronger  I  did  not  dare 
let  myself  dream  of  touching  you  — but 
now  — 

You  come  closer  here  than  in  the 
Kiva !  O  Talapsha  Maid  !  not  dearer  — 
but  as  if  not  so  much  afraid ! 

Those  old  walls  frightened  others ! 
I  wonder  now  if  the  thousand  years  of 
Indian  thought  in  those  shadows  helped 
to  make  a  barrier?  I  never  could  feel 
you  descend  into  the  shadows  of  the 
Kiva  with  me.  When  I  was  ill  I  remem 
ber  once  I  awakened  myself  calling  for 
you! 

But  in  the  open,  there  was  no  bar 
rier  even  there!  When  I  came  outside 
and  sat  under  the  stars  at  night,  you 
would  slip  silently  down  beside  me  on 
the  old  wall. 

84 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

0  Dream  Maid !   I  am  happy  to  be 
here  in  sight  of  the  Shrine. 

1  did  not  know  it  meant  so  much 
until  they  carried  me  down  where  I  asked 
to  come,  and  when  they  had  done  so,  and 
laid  me  in  the  shadow  here,  I  looked  up 
at  the  mesa  and  then  covered  my  face 
with  the  blanket. 

They  thought  I  slept,  but  I  only 
feared  they  would  see  the  tears  in  the 
eyes  of  your  Indian ! 

It  was  in  the  Moon  of  the  Peach 
Tree  Bloom  that  you  wrote  me  first  —  O 
Lady  Mine,  of  the  night  bird's  song!  — 
and  now  the  peaches  are  ripe  in  the  Love 
Moon  of  the  Dream ! 

The  women  and  children  are  drying 
them  on  the  rocks  in  the  sun,  and  carry 
them  in  baskets  and  great  bowls  up  to 
their  homes  on  the  mesa. 

Tu-wa-ni-ne-ma  still  sits  there  in  the 

85 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

shadow  of  the  great  rock  and  looks — and 
looks ! 

She  dries  no  peaches,  and  her  brother 
is  sent  with  the  herd. 

I  tell  her  she  will  have  no  peaches 
for  winter  time,  and  that  she  will  be  sorry 
then,  but  she  looks  like  a  grieved  child, 
and  asks  if  I  do  not  want  her  there. 

I  can  not  say  "no,"  for  she  is  to  me 
like  a  young  mother-bird  —  and  at  the 
same  time  is  like  a  boy  comrade,  who 
tries  to  be  master ! 

She  does  not  like  it  at  all  that  I  write 
here  —  she  is  so  sure  that  it  tires  me. 

O  Wanima,  sand  of  the  desert !  you 
are  a  woman  creature,  and  wise, — but 
even  you  do  not  see  that  it  is  to  the 
letters,  and  to  the  poems,  and  to  the 
dreams,  I  hold  fast,  and  that  through  them 
only,  I  have  life ! 

It  may  be  that  one  more  letter  might 

86 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

come  from  you  —  it  may  be !  That  hope 
only  came  to  me  here  under  the  peach 
tree,  and  it  is  another  link  with  the  world 
you  live  in,  —  O  Singer  of  my  Songs ! 

If  it  were  only  one  line  to  tell  me 
you  would  wear  the  ring ! 

How  weak  a  man  may  grow  in  a  few 
days  and  nights !  I  do  not  mean  to  plead 
with  you,  Beloved  —  see,  I  will  draw  the 
pen  through  that  line,  and  it  will  be  as  if 
it  had  not  been  written  ! 

Once  I  must  go  up  to  the  heights, 
and  to  the  shrine  of  our  shells,  — once 
more ! 

Tu-wa-ni-ne-ma  looks  sad  and  has 
fears  when  I  speak  of  it.  She  says  the 
way  is  too  steep  —  the  road  is  too  long 
for  me !  But  once  there  I  could  rest  all 
the  day  —  I  could  ride  to  the  stone  steps 
of  Walpi,  and  then,  when  our  star  shone, 
I  could  ride  down  again  from  the  Shrine 

87 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

to  our  Peach  Tree  Hogan,  with  you 
beside  me  —  always  beside  me  ! 

I  dream  of  wonderful  rides  we  would 
take  together  now — if  only  this  weakness 
would  leave  me ! 

To  the  north,  up  the  valley  between 
the  two  mesas,  one  can  see  a  long  way 
until  the  misty  veil  of  distance  hides  the 
end. 

One  cliff  is  there,  on  which  the  sun 
light  seems  to  linger  longest  —  I  have 
loved  it  always. 

Far  up  that  valley  —  a  look  and  a 
half  away, —  there  is  a  wonderful  canon 
of  mystery,  where  we  could  wander  for 
weeks  in  a  world  of  our  own. 

The  Ancient  people  of  the  Other 
Days  dwelt  there,  and  the  Navajos  own 
the  land  now,  as  my  people  owned  the 
land  of  these  dead  cities  of  the  desert. 

We    would    wander    alone    in    the 

88 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

shadows  of  the  echoing  walls,  and  our 
life  would  be  a  dream-life  of  the  silent 
places.  An  Indian  Adam,  and — no — not 
Eve !  Was  there  not  a  Lilith  who  came 
first  in  the  old  mythology  ?  You  should 
be  Lilith  —  an  unawakened  Lilith! 

We  would  find  the  secret  of  the  fire 
together ;  we  would  walk  with  the  gods, 
and  hear  their  voices  in  the  echo  of  the 
canons,  and  in  the  whisper  of  the  winds ! 

We  would  watch  the  Morning  Star 
come  from  the  Under-World,  and  the 
star  of  the  night  break  through  the  blue ! 

Your  bed  should  be  the  softest  and 
warmest,  and  under  the  cushion  for  your 
dear  head  there  would  be  always  the  bit 
of  fragrance  to  speak  of  me  to  you  through 
the  night !  In  the  desert  it  would  be  of 
the  sage  brush,  in  the  forests  it  would 
be  of  the  pine  needles,  so  soft  and  fra 
grant  they  are ! 

89 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

And  on  one  mesa,  sacred  to  thoughts 
of  you,  it  would  be  sweetest  of  all,— the 
Hernava  with  its  odor  delicious,  and  its 
tiny  rose  of  gold. 

And  sometimes  there  would,  per 
haps,  be  storms  in  our  Eden  —  and  then 
-the  thought  is  sweet!  — I  could  come 
closer  and  shelter  you ! 

And  always  —  under  the  stars'  light, 
or  the  storm's  anger — I  would  be  your 
sentinel. 

O  Moon  Maid  of  Mine !  In  what 
life  shall  we  ride  together  to  those  places 
where  I  carry  you  in  my  dreams  to-day  ? 


90 


At  the  Sun  Shrine  of  the  Mesa. 

Lady  Mine  of  the  New  Moon : 

Blue  and  gray  and  the  chill  of  the 
White  Dawn,  then  the  ride  up  the  trail 
past  the  well  where  the  teva  bloom  of 
green  hangs  from  the  edge  of  the  bank 
like  a  curtain !  Down  the  steps,  to  the 
water  below,  and  up  on  the  guardian 
rocks  above,  are  the  many  prayer  plumes 
bearing  record  of  the  Indian  faith. 

Peach  orchards  with  the  cool  shad 
ows  are  left  behind  there,  and  we  ride  - 
you  and  I,  Beloved! — slowly  along  the 
line  of  stepping  stones  of  the  foot-trail 
where  the  women  go  steadily,  day  after 

91 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

day,  bearing  the  water  jars.  Up  and  up, 
where  the  rocks  begin,  and  the  desert 
flowers  nestle  in  the  sand. 

Then  the  glow  of  the  Yellow  Dawn 
grows,  and  the  desert  is  spread  below, 
gold  and  green  in  the  near  morning  light, 
but  deep  dark  blue  where  the  shadows 
of  the  far  mesas  march  backwards  to  the 
foot  of  their  cliffs. 

Above  all  that  sweep  of  the  cold 
colors  of  dawn  there  comes,  like  a  bene 
diction,  a  touch  of  gold  on  the  portal  of 
Hua-lo,  and  on  the  steps  close  to  the  Sun 
Shrine. 

Then  the  Shrine  itself  catches  the 
glory  of  it  —  and  all  the  eastern  face  of 
the  mesa  is  deluged  by  a  flood  of  radiance. 

The  gray  stone  walls  of  the  Apache 
shield,  and  records  of  battles,  are  trans 
figured,— no  gray  remains,  only  a  deep 
rose  flush  of  indescribable  harmony. 

92 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

From  the  portal  one  sees,  far  below 
to  the  west,  the  cool  dewy  shadows  of 
the  untouched  dawn,  held  there  by  the 
towering  cliffs,  and  on  a  roof  of  Te-hua  a 
herald  stands  and  calls  to  the  people. 

Gold  shafts  of  the  rising  sun  touch 
his  blanket  of  crimson  until  he  looks  a 
figure  of  flame  against  the  sky !  I  lie 
here  on  my  blanket  and  drink  in  the 
beauty  of  it,  and  put  it  on  the  paper  for 
the  days  when  I  may  not  be  able  to  ride 
here. 

Under  the  Peach  Tree  we  can  read 
this,  and  live  it  over  again  together ! 

I  look  at  the  steps  leading  to  my 
sacred  solitary  mesa.  I  can  not  ride  up 
there,  so  only  my  thoughts  go ! 

We  are  saying  good-bye  to  it  — O 
Singer  of  my  Songs  ! 


93 


Sunset  at  the  Shrine. 

We  have  said  good-bye  also  to 
Walpi  — though  Walpi  care  nothing  for 
any  human  thing  or  its  heart-breaks ! 
She  looked  magnificent  against  the  pale, 
opaline  glory  flooding  the  Sacred  Moun 
tains  this  evening. 

And  trembling  there  in  its  lone 
radiance  —  our  star  ! 

A  little  child  gave  me  a  cluster  of 
the  butterfly  flower  —  a  white  primrose 
of  the  sand.  It  is  very  white  and  tender. 
It  speaks  of  you  —  and  I  carry  it  with  me 
for  the  Shrine  at  the  portal,  and  am  wait 
ing  there,  sheltered  from  the  breeze  by  a 
great  rock,  and  watching  the  sun  go  down. 

94 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

Softest  golden  glow  lingers  over  the 
mesa,  for  the  sun  is  out  of  sight.  The 
sky  is  palest  yellow  now  —  and  palest 
green — with  red-gold  lines  of  clouds  low 
in  the  horizon,  where  it  meets  a  dark 
stretch  of  mesa. 

All  between  the  far  western  mesa 
and  my  own  heights  is  in  shadow  —  dark, 
flat  shadow !  Only  by  looking  long  can 
one  pick  out  little  fields  of  corn  and 
melons  of  the  cliff  people,  or  the  little 
reflected  light  in  pools  where  last  night's 
rain  has  lingered. 

Walpi  and  Mishongavi  face  each 
other,  standing  on  the  cliffs  like  two 
great  forts, —  each  with  its  village  back  of 
it  on  which  to  draw  in^time  of  battle. 
They  make  a  picture  in  this  light  not  to 
be  forgotten,— and  back  of  them  the 
Sacred  Mountains  crowned  with  gold- 
the  last  signal  from  a  dead  day ! 

95 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

Some  "  Bahannas  "  have  come  down 
the  roadway  and  stopped  by  the  Shrine. 
A  bahanna  is  a  white  outsider.  Even 
you,  O  Corn-Silk  Maid!  who  are 
Lolomi,  which  means  all  of  good,  and  all 
of  blessing,  and  all  of  sweetness  the  Hopi 
language,  or  any  other  language,  can  con 
dense  in  one  word,— even  you  would  be 
bahanna  in  my  land— to  all  but  me ! 

I  can  see  them  from  where  I  lie.  It 
is  a  girl  and  a  man.  Her  voice  is  very 
sweet  —  many  of  the  bahannas  hurt  one's 
ears  with  their  voices  ! 

They  are  speaking  of  a  ring  she 
wears,  O  Lady  of  the  New  Moon!  — if 
you  had  ever  looked  at  me  with  the  look 
she  gives  to  him  ! 

You  are  so  close  beside  me  —  can 
you  not  see,  can  you  not  feel,  what  it 
would  have  meant  to  a  man  ? 

The  man   kisses  the  ring  and  the 

96 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

hand,  and  speaks  of  some  house  of  the 
terraces  where  he  had  bought  it  for  her, 
and  where  the  natives  had  come  in  to 
smile  and  stare  at  her. 

"It  was  as  if  they  had  not  been  there," 
said  the  girl,  and  she  held  his  hand  for  a 
moment  in  both  her  own  against  her 
breast ;  "even  your  silence  held  a  sort  of 
speech.  If  you  had  gone  away,  and  never 
spoken,  I  should  have  felt  from  that  day's 
silence  that  you  did  care." 

"Of  course,  I  did  care,"  and  the  man 
stroked  her  hair  and  smiled  down  at  her. 
"I  came  near  telling  you  before  all  that 
brown  audience,  but  the  cloven  foot  of 
the  missionary  has  been  abroad  in  this 
land,  and  I  feared  some  one  of  the  listen 
ers  knew  English." 

A  goat  herder  of  Te-hua  came  up 
the  west  trail  with  his  flock,  and  the 
hands  of  the  man  and  the  woman  fell 

97 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

apart,  and  they  sat  in  silence  while  the 
dusk  fell. 

"  They  will  be  waiting  for  us  across 
there,"  said  the  man  at  last. 

The  girl  stood  up  and  looked  slowly 
across  the  mesa  and  plain,  and  then  up  at 
the  cliff  of  the  steps,  and  at  Venus  shin 
ing  over  the  great  rock  mass  above  her. 

"Good-bye,  Walpi !  We  two  will 
never  again  see  together  your  fortress 
of  the  mesa,"  she  said.  "  I  wish  I  knew 
the  Indian  name  of  that  great  star  there. 
It  seems  to  belong  to  this  place  alone, 
and  to  our  shrine,  and  to  our  nights  to 
gether!" 

The  man  said,  "  Come,"  and  tried  to 
draw  her  away  from  the  shrine.  "This 
old  pagan  corner  has  bewitched  you  —  I 
could  fancy  you  planting  plume  prayer 
sticks  at  this  old  pile  of  rocks  — come !  " 

But    she    did    not    go.    She  stood 

98 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

looking  down  at  the  plume  sticks.  Beside 
them  my  shells  lay,  and  the  man  reached 
across  and  lifted  two. 

"Here  is  at  last  a  bit  of  the  shrine 
we  can  take  with  us,"  he  said.  "  I  can 
not  give  you  the  star,  or  even  the  Indian 
name  of  it,  but  I  can  give  you  this, 
which  may  have  meant  a  prayer  of  some 
pagan  to  some  heathen  god  —  I  will  take 
the  other  one  as  a  memento, — come ! " 

She  took  it  and  started  to  follow  him 
down  the  foot  trail,  but  as  the  man  dis 
appeared  around  the  rocks,  and  I  rose 
from  my  nook,  the  girl  came  running 
silently  —  breathlessly  —  up  the  trail  — 
straight  —  straight  to  the  shrine  ! 

The  white  shell  was  in  her  hand,  and 
she  put  it  to  her  lips  and  leaned,  heavily 
breathing,  against  the  rocks. 

"  For  him— for  him— for  him  ! "  she 
whispered,  and  I  knew  it  was  a  prayer  — 

99    , 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

her  voice  and  her  eyes  held  prayers 
unspoken ! 

Then  she  turned  to  leave,  and  almost 
screamed  as  she  faced  me,  and  both  of 
us  were  held  silent  a  moment,  staring  into 
one  another's  eyes.  Hers  were  filled  with 
terror.  To  her  I  was  only  a  brown 
Indian,  without  even  the  usual  touch  of 
white  man's  garb,  and  I  had  terrified  her 
beyond  even  calling  aloud,  so  I  spoke. 

"The  name  of  the  star  is  Wugo-sha- 
ho,"  I  said,  "  and  you  are  right  —  it  does 
belong  to  the  Shrine.  It  will  carry  your 
prayer  after  the  Sun  to  the  Other  World." 

"Who  are  —you?"  She  could  say  no 
more. 

"I  am  Se-tewa,  an  Indian  of  the 
mesa,"  I  said,  and  to  reassure  her,  I  laid 
the  white  cluster  of  the  desert  primrose 
in  her  hand;  — for  in  her  face  as  she 

stood  by  the  Shrine  with  the  prayer  in 
100 


INDIAN     LOVE     LETTERS 

her  eyes,  there  was  a  look  which  belonged 
to  the  Sacred  Places,  and  the  White  Shell 
things ! 

Because  of  the  love  in  her  eyes,  I 
felt  less  lonely.  There  was  some  living 
soul  near  in  this  desert  world  who  felt 
the  meaning  of  the  shrine  at  the  portal ! 

She  seemed  to  bring  you  —  O 
Hoetska !  gray  little  singer  of  the  night 
and  the  desert  moon — even  closer  to  me! 

I  listened  for  your  name  bird's  call 
while  our  Love  Moon— golden  and  clear 
—wheeled  into  the  glorified  horizon! 
Later  it  grew  a  globe  of  silver,  light  and 
cool — but  just  as  the  first  it  was  palpi 
tating  with  warmth,  and  the  green  lines 
of  the  corn  fields,  and  the  brown-gray  of 
the  sands,  alike  caught  the  flame  of  it  — 
and  the  high  levels  of  Hu-Katwe  and  the 
buried  cities,  were  touched  as  by  their 

long  dead  altar  fires  ! 
101 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

And  in  the  light  of  it  we  rode  silently 
down  the  road  instead  of  the  trail.  And 
again  my  horse  grew  impatient  at  being 
halted  and  held  under  the  stone  wall  to 
watch  our  star  out  of  sight  back  of  the 
Shrine. 

It  was  so  beautiful  when  framed  in 
the  portal  there  against  the  purple  sky 
that  the  perfection  of  it  made  the  heart 
ache, —  it  held  a  beauty  supreme,  an 
untranslatable  thought ! 

And  the  crown  of  the  perfect  day 
from  the  dawn  until  our  star  went  down, 
has  been  that  you  were  with  me  —  I  was 
never  alone  one  moment !— all  the  beauty 
of  sky,  and  plain,  and  mesa,  was  doubled. 

Never  before  has  it  been  so  perfect ! 

To-night  you  were  in  perfect  truth 
the  Lady  of  the  Love  Moon  —  still,  and 
silent  beside  me,  but  breathing  with  my 
breath,  and  heart-beating  with  my  heart ! 

102 


INDIAN    LOVE     LETTERS 

When  I  put  this  paper  aside,  and 
wrap  my  blanket  around  me,  I  know  that 
closing  of  the  eyes,  or  sleep,  will  only 
bring  nearer  the  caress  of  your  presence ! 

At  last  the  dread  of  losing  you  has 
left  me.  Yet,  O  Maid  of  the  Dream,  I 
stand  sentinel  to  guard  you  from— 
myself ! 


103 


I  can  not  write,  O  Talapsha !— I  can 
not  write  what  you  make  me  feel  these 
nights  when  the  Love  Moon  dies! 

But  the  medicine  men  of  the  Moun 
tain  Chants  have  solved  a  problem ! 

The  dreamer  of  dreams  can,  through 
mental  and  spiritual  faithfulness  to  him 
self,  create  the  Dream  which  is  the  Real 
of  Life! 


104 


Only  the  stars  give  light,  and  our 
Love  Moon  is  pale  at  the  dawn ! 


105 


Hoetska: 

Last  night  your  bird  called  to  me  — 
it  was  not  startled  this  time  by  the  shep 
herd — no  one  had  passed! 

The  call  was  to  me  and  the  music 
has  sounded  in  my  heart  all  the  day! 

I  can  not  make  records  of  my  be 
loved  Desert  for  you  these  days — only 
poems  can  I  write  for  you  — 

They  will  hold  the  records,  and  the 
thoughts  in  the  records,  and  only  you,  O 
Beloved !  will  know  the  story  held  within 
the  heart  of  them. 


106 


In  my  dreams  I  see  you  go  up  the 
trail  ahead  of  me  leading  me  to  the  Sun 
Shrine !  It  is  strange  — many  times  that 
dream  has  come  to  me ! 

You  belong  always  on  the  heights  — 
O  Lady  of  the  New  Moon !  But  in  the 
dreams  I  see  you  there  alone,  and  — I 
want  to  stand  beside  you  there,  yet  can 
not  follow ! 


107 


O  Dream : 

I  have  lived,  for  the  memory  of  you, 
the  life  of  the  Kiva ! 

You,  Lady  Beloved,  do  not  know  in 
your  world  what  that  means.  In  your 
colleges,  and  in  the  cities,  I  found  no 
men  who  knew  that  life. 

It  is  lonely  as  the  mesa  top  in  the 
darkness,  and  as  far  above  the  world ! 

Yet  the  mesa  rose,  hernava,  grows 
there,  and,  in  its  fragrance  in  the  cool 
dusk,  dreams  come  until  they  touch  a 
man! 

And,  in  that  odorous  darkness,  you 
live  for  me  in  its  petals  of  gold  ! 

108 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

I  do  not  touch  them  with  my  lips  — 
Soul  of  Mine !  I  do  not  pluck  one  to 
wear,  as  your  white  friends  wear  the 
freezias  in  their  dinner  coats  ;  — only  the 
winds  kiss  it,  and  our  star's  light  touches 
it,  and  when  I  lie  waiting  for  sleep  in 
the  dusk  of  the  desert  night,  I  look  up  at 
our  star,  and  know  that  it  shines  on  my 
rose,  and  that  the  wind  of  the  mesa 
brings  its  breath  to  me ! 

And  then  —  sometimes  that  breath 
does  not  come  until  many  stars  have 
crossed  the  sky!  — but  then,  Hoetska  — 
gray  little  singer  of  the  desert  —  then,  I 
sleep ! 


109 


Dream  Maid  of  Mine : 

I  have  told  Tu-wa-ni-ne-ma  of  the 
poems  ;  I  have  written  your  name  on  the 
envelope  in  which  they  are  to  go  to  you. 

Some  night  I  will  fall  asleep  here 
under  the  Desert  Sky;  and  the  gray- fox 
skin  in  which  the  sun  is  wrapped  for  the 
White  Dawn  will  be  slipped  off,  and  the 
yellow- fox  skin  of  the  Yellow  Dawn  will 
take  its  place;  —  and  even  that  —  the 
glory  of  the  light  in  which  I  was  born  to 
my  mother  will  not  waken  me ! 

But  the  poems  will  go  to  you  — 
though  I  sleep ! 

I    have    a    wish, —  a  most   strange, 
no 


INDIAN     LOVE    LETTERS 

childish  wish, —  that  the  hernava  should 
grow  where  they  cover  me  from  sight  in 
the  desert ! 

But  there  will  be  no  one  to  know 
that  it  spoke  to  me  of  you  through  the 
long  nights;  — and  no  one  to  plant  it 
there  !  The  Hopi  marks  no  grave. 

Will  the  things  of  fragrance,  and 
sweetness,  and  beauty,  beloved  of  us  in 
the  Earth-Life,  grow  for  us  in  the  sun 
shine  gardens  of  the  Other -World  ? 

The  armlet   I   could  not  finish.     I 
have  buried  it  deep  in  the  sand  dune !  - 
no  other  must  look  on  the  thought  I  tried 
to  shape  for  you  in  the  silver. 

That  was  another  good-bye ! 


111 


Beloved : 

I  feel  that  you  once  more  will  come 
to  me  at  the  shrine  where  our  white 
shells  are!  I  do  not  know  when  —  but 
I  feel  you  there ! 

And,  listen — O  Maid  of  the  Corn- 
Silk  Hair ! 

It  makes  no  difference  as  to  the 
name  of  the  God — since  Love  is  the  real 
God  of  All  the  World! 

Each  language  has  its  own  sign  for 
that  God,  but,  even  if  not  named,  the 
Prayer  Thought  reaches  Him,  and  is 
answered— Somewhere ! 

I  give  you  a  rule  for  prayer  of  one 
112 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

Order  of  Priests  of  our  Province  of  Tus- 
ayan,—  it  covers  much  for  those  whose 
shrines  and  whose  gods  are  far  apart ! 

"You  of  the  antelope  Kiva,  and  you 
of  the  snake  Kiva,  must  plant  your 
plumes  apart;  —  but  your  prayers,  said 
over  the  plumes,  will  meet  as  in  one 
straight  tongue ! " 


113 


Lady  of  My  Dead  Love  Moon : 

It  is  night  —  doubly  night ! 

Wanima  tells  me  there  was  this 
evening  a  slender  crescent  in  the  sky — 
and  I  did  not  see  it  —  did  not  see  it ! 

It  is  as  if  you  had  come  to  me,  and  I 
had  turned  my  head  from  you  — I,  who 
seem  to  have  waited  for  you  through  all 
the  lives  of  the  Other  Worlds! 

I  feel  guilty  that  I  slept  that  little, 
little  while !  Come  close  that  you  may 
feel  that  it  is  I  who  am  the  loser — I ! 

It  looks  dark  on  the  mesa— only  the 
stars  give  light  — and  the  way  is  steep- 
but  I  wonder  if  I  were  at  the  portal  now, 

114 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

if  the  silver  curve  of  it  would  be  seen 
above  the  horizon ! 

Not  to  say  good-bye  to  your  silver 
crescent — the  very  symbol  of  a  bond  not 
to  be  named ! 


115 


Dream  Beloved : 

Come  closer !     It  will  not  be  here  at 
the  Hogan  of  our  Peach  Tree  that  I  will 

say  good-bye  to  you I  can  not  see 

where  it  will  be That  Shadow  at 

the  End  of  the  Trail  covers  so  much  ! 


116 


A  little  while  I  have  slept  and  wak 
ened  at  some  call !  Was  it  Le-lang-uh 
of  the  Flute  of  the  Gods  ? 

The  little  winds  blow  across  the 
dunes  and  sigh,  but  it  was  not  a  sigh  by 
which  I  was  called!  To  hear  if  it  is  your 
bird  of  the  Moon  Nights,  I  listen,  but 
no  sound  comes ! 

I  look  up  at  the  Shrine,  and  a  star 
fell  while  I  looked. 

O  Star  in  my  Sky !  Do  not  fall  to 
lower  level!  Live  there  above  the  Earth- 
World— and  lift  me  up  to  you  ! 

The  music  of  the  poems  may  tell  you 
a  little  of  what  my  dreams  are  —  and  all 
that  I 

117 


Again  the  call Is  it  the  wind, 

or  is  it  the  Flute? 


118 


O  Singer  Who  Sang  of  the  Night-Bird  of 
the  Desert : 

And  who  brought  a  living  soul  of 
music  to  marriage  with  an  Indian  shep 
herd's  song! 

Will  you,  when  the  crescent  of  the 
Love  Moon  comes  again,  with  that  star 
in  the  sky,  remember  the  words  of  that 
desert  song,  and  sing  it  sometimes  in  the 
dusk — where  the  white  shells  are — and 
the  pines  are — and  where,  perhaps,  I 
may  be  ? 


119 


You! 

It  is  only  because  you  are  a  girl 
white  in  color,  with  hair  like  the  corn- 
silk,  that  he  made  you  in  his  heart  a 
woman-god  of  the  White  Shell  Things  ! 

When  we  go  to  the  Under-World  — 
all — you  may  be  the  woman  of  the  brown 
skin,  and  he  may  know  me  there  as  the 
girl  of  the  white  shells,  and  the  white 
clouds,  and  the  white  flowers ! 

That  is  why  I  live  now  and  plant 
prayer  plumes  at  the  Shrine,  and  do  not 
throw  myself  from  the  mesa  to  the  rocks 
where  his  grave  is. 

He  wrote  of  the  White  Shell  Thoughts 

and  of  the  corn-silk  hair  in  the  poems. 
120 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

And  he  wrote  one  name  through  the 
poems  —  Hoetska  —  the  night-bird  that 
sings  to  the  moon  in  the  desert ! 

I  burned  them  all ! 

The  ashes  are  blown  by  the  winds 
across  the  sands ! 

I  wish  every  track  of  every  thought 
of  the  White  People  could  be  blown  like 
that  into  the  Nothing ! 

I  alone  know  what  he  thought  the 
hour  that  was  the  last,  and  you  alone 
know  how  I  hate  you !  I  am  glad  now 
for  the  first  time  that  I  learn  that  English, 
so  I  can  say  it  to  you  on  this  paper ! 

Four  days  he  is  under  the  ground  by 
the  trail,  and  four  nights  he  comes  back 
in  the  dark  and  stands  by  me,  and  makes 
me  send  these  letters — or  I  would  not  be 
sending  them ! 

I  was  the  one  to  find  him.  The 
stones  by  the  Sun  Shrine  are  red  yet 

from  the  blood  that  choked  him. 
121 


INDIAN    LOVE    LETTERS 

He  did  not  know  it,  but  my  arm  was 
around  him  till  all  the  breath  went ! 

I  will  not  tell  you  what  his  last 

word  was I  will  not,  though  he 

come  back  from  the  Under-World  to 
strangle  me  with  his  hands  ! 

He,  the  Indian,  dreamed  he  was 
something  in  your  white  life  — a  little 
song  you  would  think  of,  and  sing  some 
times  ! 

But  I  know  he  was  only  Se-kyal-est- 
tewa— the  Light  of  the  Sky  before  the 
Sun  come  up! 

And  I  am  only  Tu-wa-ni-ne-ma— the 
Sand  of  the  Desert ! 


122 


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